Here’s the run down in bulleted form for ease of reading.

• American Release: November 19th
• Wii includes Wii Sports game
• One color, white, in initial shipment
• One configuration available
• MSRP: US$249
• First Party games will be priced at US$50
• Wii Sports includes:
  • Wii Tennis
  • Wii Baseball
  • Wii Golf
  • Wii Bowling
  • Wii Boxing
• Zelda: Twilight Princess available at Launch
• Expecting 30 launch titles
• Virtual Console called Wii Channels
• Shop Channel for buying old games
• Disc Channel is for 130 Gamecube games(?)
• Mii Channel – lets you make an avatar and store it on your Wii-mote
• Wii Digital Photo Viewer (plays videos too!)
• Internet access with Opera Browser
• Cost of extra Wii-mote: US$39.99
• Cost of extra nunchuk attachment: US$19.99
• DS and Wii interaction will be announced in the future (seems to be a secret still)
• Wii comes with:
  • Console
  • cables
  • sensor bar
  • one wii-mote
  • one nunchuk attachment

I’ll make this pretty later, but there you go. The Wii. Coming November 19th.

Info from Engadget’s Live Blogging of the NYC Press event.

Slave Labor Graphics’ deal with Disney is resulting in some strange deals. For example, Comicon.com’s PULSE has an article on the new Tron series, that’s apparently already shipped its first issue. What? Missed that one.

As for Marvel, SuperHeroHype.com reports that the Sub-Mariner movie is going to be directed and REWRITTEN (what x 2?) Johnathon Mostow. His previous work? Most recently, Terminator 3. I hope he’ll have time, around the demands of directing Terminator 4. How can it fail? After all, the listed writers previously wrote the stunners Catwoman and The Net 2.0 (a direct to video sequel).

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has an article reporting a November 19th 2006 release date for the Wii at a price point of 250$ US. Shortly after this article was posted it was pulled and gave a 404 error but as of posting this the article is there again. Due to this the accuracy of the information is somewhat suspect until further verification can be made. It’s important to note that the article orginally did not mention the December 2nd release date for the Wii in Japan but rather had that information added to it after the Tokyo press conference with this announcement ended so this article can’t be considered to have been breaking this news accurately.

Here’s the relevant quote in case the article is pulled again:

In a move that may allow Nintendo of Japan to take advantage of stumbles by its main rival, the company plans to announce today that it will release its new Wii video-game console in North and South America on Nov. 19, just as the holiday shopping season begins, and that the machine will cost $250 in the United States.

The article goes on to mention that Wii games will be sold at a price of 50$ US, 10$ cheaper than the competition and that Wii Virtual Console titles will be going for 5 to 10$ US, a statement supported by what we’re seeing out of the Nintendo press conference in Tokyo.

Tonight Spike TV‘s Blade the Series concludes it’s first season. There’s been no confirmation of whether or not the show is being renewed. When asked about the possibility of having a second season the show’s star Kirk “Sticky” Jones was quoted to say in an interview with MediaBlvd Magazine that “I’ve been told, unofficially, that it will. I’ve got the inside scoop.”. The show did quite well with it’s pilot episode with ground breaking ratings for Spike TV. Though ratings dropped for the rest of the season the show still had a good deal of success.

This season really didn’t pull any punches. With some pretty graphic violent scenes and sexual content it’s nice to see something like this on TV where in the past you’d be hard pressed to find it in theatres.

I think the show so far has been excellent. The story has been quite gripping and I find the characters to be very well fleshed out with tons of personality. One problem as I see it is they’re spending so much time giving the vampire vilains great personality that in contrast the hero Blade and his gimp sidekick seem boring. Though one shouldn’t fault the writters and actors for outshinning them. It’s just that the concept of having a very solitary broody character like Blade makes it difficult to give him much depth. Going against this wouldn’t really be good for the series. Still I find they do a great job of compensating for this with the other characters. You can’t really have a series who’s heroes are villains so Blade just sort of needs to be there.

The cast has done a great job. Kirk “Sticky” Jones is great as the stoic bad ass Blade. He’s not Wesley Snipes but he fills his shoes and brings more than just emulating. The stylish and cool Marcus, protrayed by Neil Jackson plays both a very civilised and clean cut business man and viscious and capable adversary to Blade. Jessica Gower who plays Chase plays a wonderfull bitch. Whether that’s her natural demeaner or not doesn’t affect the fact that she delivers a sweet performance who’s hotness is superceeded only by the smokin’ hot Jill Wagner as Krista, Blade’s mole/love interest/antagonist/whatever! The character of Shen by Nelson Lee hasn’t had an excessive amount of screen time. He’s no Whistler but then it would be pretty lame if his character was just like him. My favourite performance of the season by far had to be Emily Hirst as the incredibly creepy Charlotte, the young pure blood vampire who verbally chastises otherwise intimidating characters and shows a disturbing preference for the blood of newborn babies. I wouldn’t have thought that a child could give such a performance as to make me believe that she was really a few hundred years old but here we are. I was starting to worry about how they’d deal with a vampire character who’s actress was so young that she would in time show clear signs of aging. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem with her…

Hats off to a great season filled with action packed excitement and a slew of powerfull scenes that made me cringe and look away more than once. In a time with a lot of crap on TV here’s hoping we get a lot more of this great show.

Links:
Spike TV’s official site
Official forum
Blade: The Series Myspace page
Series page at IMDB
Blade: The Series on Wikipedia
A popular fan site
Original powet.tv post about Blade: The Series premiere

Yesterday we reported a list of Sega Genesis games for the Wii as metioned on IGN. These were listed on the ESRB’s website where one can search for games by system and publisher. Today I was searching some more and found that these games had disapeared from the list. A search for games on the Wii now returns 12 titles rather than 18 and those Sega Genesis titles are missing. Yesterday a search for publisher “Sega” on the Wii platform yielded 7 results. Today 0.

Why? Could be nothing. Could be Sega doesn’t want people to know what’s out. Could be these games aren’t confirmed and they don’t want people spreading rumours like we have. We can only jump to conclusions so get your mat out!

Compare a screenshot from yesterday (left) to today (right):

Popbox Collectibles is putting together a line of statues that link together at their base and form a diarama. The line will be made exclusively for the asian market. It supposedly features major players in the Civil War conflict currently playing out in the Marvel Universe. I say supposedly because the first wave is compromised of almost noone from the actual storyline. You can see the line ups below. Wave 1 is slated for October and Wave 2 is slated for December of this year. Pictures are below.

• Wave 1:
  • Wolverine (old yellow costume, not Astonishing X-Men outfit)
  • Cyclops (in old Jim Lee uniform)
  • Juggernaut
  • Beast (Astonishing X-Men outfit)
• Wave 2:
  • Captain America
  • Iron Man
  • Spider-Man
  • Thing

 

Captain America #21
written by Ed Brubaker, art by Steve Epting

If you haven’t heard the praises of this book yet, you’ve been living under a freaking rock. Basically, since issue 1 the Winter Soldier’s been running around, making Cap’s life into off-the-walls hell, initially by fighting him, and then later with the revelation that he’s actually Bucky. But now that Bucky’s memories are coming back together, he’s been going after the people that’ve brainwashed him and made him into a killing machine for the last few decades. At the very end of last issue, that trail FINALLY crossed with Cap’s, bringing the two of them to the same place at the same time.

Even though this is supposed to be part 3 of 4 in the storyarc, this should be a big issue, because Cap and Bucky haven’t yet had a chance to speak to one another – at least, not since Bucky’s mind started really healing, and it looks like they’re about to get a chance to at least fight side-by-side, if nothing else.

Basically, the Winter Soldier is badass, Brubaker writes a fantastic Cap, Brubaker also writes intelligent and excellent stories, and Epting sells these guys in the serious situations and makes the costumes work damn well. As much as I dig Ultimate Cap’s outfit, Epting makes normal Marvel U’s Cap look just as believeable.

Last but not least – We’re not being dragged down with Civil War crossovers, keeping the book from being published during the delay months, or taking us away from the wonderful, hard-hitting stories they’re telling month after month. I suppose eventually the registration issues will catch up to us, but for now, the book is keeping on steady course for awesomeness.

IGN reports a list of Sega Genesis games for the Wii Virtual Console. These titles are listed on the ESRB website. The Entertainment Software Rating Board must rate all games before they can go on sale in the US. I guess there’s no surprising them.

By going to the website and doing a simple search for the publisher “Sega” and chosing the platform “Wii” you’ll see that the following games will probably be available:

Though with only 18 titles for the Wii listed on the ESRB site one doesn’t even need to narrow it down to Sega at this point. Kind of funny that Sega has the only exclusive Wii titles listed with nothing by Nintendo there yet.

It’s not known whether or not this is all the games we’ll be getting but if I had to guess I’d say this is probably all we’re getting in the first batch. Why submit just a few of the more reckogniseable titles for approval and sit on others? Still this is a great assortment of some of the best games the Sega Genesis had to offer and I can’t wait to see what else the Wii Virtual Console has in store.

Thanks to powet poster Spooie for the heads up.