Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz is looking like a simian-shaped lump of fun in this new gameplay trailer for the motion-sensitive Wii game - just hit the movies tab above to see for yourself.

Concentrating more on the new Wii-mote-friendly minigames, the trailer shows little of the traditional Monkey Ball puzzle-board gameplay. You will, however, be able to spot one of the newly-introduced stage bosses being attacked by a jumping monkey. That's right, a jumping monkey. Developer and publisher Sega is mixing things up this time round and we're liking the changes so far.

We also like the look of the squash minigame, which lets you move around the court with Wii's Nunchuk controller while swinging your racquet with the Wii-mote. But the boxing game is the one we'd like to play most; we would say "how could anyone punch such cute monkeys in the face like that?" but, let's face it, everyone's going to love giving Gon Gon a good pounding.

If any game is perfectly suited to Wii's unique interface and social gaming slant it's Super Monkey Ball, so we'll be watching this one carefully in the build-up to its launch-window release.

Movie Here ...

Australians keen to try out the Nintendo Wii won't have to wait until its December 7 local launch. Today, Nintendo unveiled details for its nationwide Play Wii tour. Starting this weekend, Nintendo will be visiting shopping centres around the country with playable Wii demo units that will allow gamers to get a taste of the House of Mario's next-generation console.

The road show will take three different forms--large shopping centre set-ups with multiple Wiis, standalone demo units for individual retail stores, and demo stands at major consumer gaming events. Aussies will get their first public taste of the Wii this weekend, with Nintendo visiting Melbourne's Highpoint Shopping Centre on November 4 and 5. The Wii will also make an appearance at this weekend's GAME1 Electronic Gaming Expo and Tournament being held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.

The Play Wii tour then rolls around the country, visiting major suburban shopping centres and stores in the states of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. ACT, Tasmania, and Northern Territory residents will unfortunately be left out..

Nintendo Australia spokesman Vispi Bhopti told GameSpot AU that all demo units, including in-store units, would be staffed by Nintendo representatives. Featured games include Wii Sports, Wii Play, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Excite Truck, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. ...

Via Gamespot

Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (also known as Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007) has sold the most in a game's first week in the UK since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas debuted two years ago. Those sales see it slip comfortably into the number one slot on the UK all-formats game chart.

FIFA 07's Xbox 360 version joins the game's seven other formats to help keep the title at number two, with sales up 96 percent on last week.

Rockstar Games' Canis Canem Edit (known as Bully outside of the UK) was the second-highest new entry at number five. Bully and PES6 are among seven other newbies this week, including Guild Wars: Nightfall at 15, Singstar Legends at 24, and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon at 27.

There are five titles heading upward, including Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, up one place to eight; Buzz! The Big Quiz, up four to 14; and Destroy All Humans 2, which went up two places to 19.

The biggest loser of the week is Kingdom Hearts 2, falling a massive 16 places to 32, with The Godfather down 14 to 37, and The Sims 2: Glamour Life Stuff almost out of the charts completely, down 13 to 39.

Next Friday (if UK retailers can manage to stick to the release dates) will see the release of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War expansion pack Dark Crusade, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2, Need for Speed Carbon, and Desperate Housewives: The Game. ...

Source: Posts on message boards like the official Xbox forums and Team Xecuter, followed up on by articles at mod-savvy sites like Xbox Scene.

The official story: A Microsoft rep said the company had no comment at this time.

What we heard: Microsoft released its Fall System Update for the Xbox 360 today and Internet forums were quickly buzzing with reports that the update had "bricked" users' consoles, rendering them unable to play games or even boot up normally.

While Microsoft is staying mum on the subject, the bulk of speculation is that the Fall Update is intended to brick Xbox 360s that have been modded. However, some posters are reporting problems with unmodded consoles being bricked, and forum-goers at Xbox Scene are saying that the update is not consistently bricking modded consoles.

Furthermore, Team Xecuter is reporting that bricked consoles can still be repaired relatively painlessly, and that Microsoft isn't banning GamerTags or specific systems from Xbox Live, something that would seem a distinct possibility if the company wanted to come down hard on modders.

So what's the deal here? If Microsoft intended to brick modded consoles, it didn't do a very thorough job of it (perhaps a warning shot to make people think twice about modding systems?). If it's an unexpected bug with the Fall Update, it seems convenient that it's happening primarily to modded systems.

Still, the few reports of the Fall Update bricking unmodded systems are troubling. While fixing the system might be an easy thing for people who cracked their systems open in the first place to mod them, it's still not something the average gamer is bound to be capable of doing.

Whether intentional or not, it seems the Fall Update is turning some Xbox 360s into paperweights. But with varying reports about who it's happening to and why, and Microsoft not explaining what's going on, there's no sure way to say which 360s will be affected by the problem.

Bogus or not bogus?: Not bogus. ...

dean73 writes to mention an article at the SeekJapan site entitled The State of Gaming in Japan. The article runs down the seventh round of the console war from the Japanese perspective. IE: The one where Microsoft is probably going to lose. From the article:
...

There must be something really hard about making those Blu-ray players that no one seems to have anticipated. First Sony had to announce twice that its BDP-S1 was going to be delayed until December 2006 due to software bugs. Now Pioneer has been delayed too, for unspecified failure to meet "quality control requirements," which may or may not be related to the other assorted blue laser shortages. The BDP-HD1, which was due to come out this month (after having been delayed from its previous May launch), won't ship now until December as well. The price, however, has dropped since we last eyed it at CES -- it's now down to $1500. We're still not sure which is bluer, us consumers, who have been trying to get one of these Blu-ray players until we go blue in the face, or Pioneer, who is singin' the blues. (This entry has been brought to you by the color "blue.") ...

This is my first program so be easy, its pretty good for a first though yet it has no sound. Check it out and post what you think.
There's a couple screenshots also.

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As of right now Lik Sang appears to no longer be on the web. Both the forums and main site have been taken down with nothing remaining besides the original "Out of Business" post where the main page once existed.

This is a sad day indeed. ...

Forget about 0.1, this is 0.2! Directly after releasing 0.1 I found out that I had included far to complex jumping functions that just didn't work. It was (almost) impossible to get to the finish-door. Now I've chucked out the new and sticked with the old, and tested it some more. It now plays fine and you will absolutely enjoy playing it. Please read the Read-me because it covers some things you must know (button configuration an bugs etc.) If you make your own levels with the level editor, please send the files to [email protected], I would highly appreciate it! There's a good change that your submitted levels will be included in the next version, or made available to the WLAN download servive I might make.

For those who do not know: Special Operations is a 2d splinter cell clone (platformer) with a level editor

I want to explicitly mention that this version may be distributed to wathever site you want.
If you distribute it, post a reply with some details.

changelog
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-30-10-06 v0.2
- Added screenshot feature
- Fixed jumping issues
- improved shooting. Almost all enemies can be shot now.
- improved memory issue
- Fixed level corruption
- Added levels 6 and 7
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