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Wii: Speculative Launch Titles

Nintendo has not handed down a list of actual release titles so far, although there are suggestions from various developers that they have a launch title inside their trench coat.  One can come up with a rather large list of possibles if you sift through enough internet, but I'll lay out some likely launch titles from the batch that are supposed to hit before year-end '06.

Twilight Princess (bundle?)
Trauma Center: Second Opinion
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Metal Slug Anthology
Wii Sports
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Call of Duty 3
Madden 07
Blitz: The League
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
Mercury Meltdown
Excite Truck
Red Steel
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
Cars
SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam

This is really just guesswork, collected from various nodes across the net.  I have sorted the more likely or interesting titles toward the top of the list, but otherwise it's just a jumble.  A massive laundry-list of a jumble.  The debut of Wii could conceivably rank as the biggest software lineup of any console launch; for that to happen, they have to beat the eighteen catridges available for the US launch of the NES back on Oct 18, 1985.  Of course, it had been out in Japan for twenty-seven months at that point.  Nintendo plans on a worldwide launch of Wii.

For comparison, Virtual Boy (Aug 14, 1995) had four launch titles and GameCube (Sep 14 JP, Nov 18 US, 2001) had three for the Japanese launch (including Super Monkey Ball, interestingly).  The US launch had more titles (12) but debatably better quality with Madden 2002, Rogue Squadron II, and a Tony Hawk game joining the three JP conversions.  Nintendo's historically anemic launch lineups might be a thing of the past.

I don't see Super Mario Galaxy on that list...

Because it's not a launch game.  They pulled it, their plan is to have big titles come out more consistently.  So, the idea is, after the launch, people have Mario to look forward to (among other things) and then probably the next Zelda, or Pokemon, or whatnot.

I'm semi-excited by Dragon Quest Swords and the new Zelda, the rest of that I feel "eh" about.

Same here, but we both know we'll end up with Trauma center, Metroid, and Red Steel as well.

That's right, if there is anything official about the release titles, it's that Mario Galaxy will be absent.  Sonic Wild Fire has been assigned "March 2007", I think.  Right now we just have vague software dates, unfortunately, so the ones nearer to October are really fuzzy.

As for Dragon Quest, wouldn't it be neat to be able to use the pointer to jiggle Jessica's tits?  No more cramming the camera against a wall and nudging the analog stick.

No?  Well, at the very least it should have lots and lots of combat.

Smash Bros will be absent also (which is probably why it's not on the list). It got bumped to 07 shortly after E3.

how many titles actually got released on virtual boy, like 25? N64 only had 2 titles at launch (Mario and Pilotwings)

gamecube was worth the 100 bucks for just smash bros and i think even if every one of those launch titles bombs Wii will be worth it for Smash Bros because putting that game online is going to be sweet.

Sweet until you get hit with lag...I can see that game being really sensitive to latency.

Somehow I think it'll be worth it just for the Zelda game, and I'm not even a fan of the Zelda series. The Madden game and Red Steel will be some serious frosting on that cake as well.

battlefield 2 seems to run fine for xbox 360 and they have what 32 player max maps? I don't know if they increased the number of players in the new smash but even if they did I doubt it would be more than 8 because even that would be insanely random chaos. I think smash should be able to run 4 player games without much lag, either way I still have my college network!

EDIT: I think gamecube was worth it for the zelda game as well (and def will be if you didn't like the cartoon graphics when the new Zelda comes out for GC this november... combat while mounted anyone?)

There was horseback archery in Ocarina.  But yeah.  The system-seller for me is Twilight Princess.  I am also very interested in Trauma Center, but I think most of the allure for anything that isn't Zelda is due to the controller.  I'm even fascinated by Madden's control scheme, although I doubt I'll buy it.

Metroid Prime, love or hate the series, is one that I am looking forward to as well.  Gotta be better than Echoes.

I'll definitely be getting the Wii, but I just wish to hell they'd included HD support.  Trying to play at standard television resolution on an HDTV sucks mightily.

Agreed. Big time.

Has it been stated yet if it will at least have a widescreen mode?  Having to stretch it would suck ass.

I really hope that at a minimum it will do the "upconversion" like some of the newer DVD players do.  I've seen some of the $100 players do it so I'm sure it would be cost feasible.

Wii will support at least 480p, and I may not be imagining seeing something where it will do 720p.  It certainly won't do 1080i or p, which is "HD".  If it's just 480p, I'll be happy since that's all I am getting out of my PS2, Cube and Xbox right now.  480p looks much, much better than "regular" signal; the difference in San Andreas on PS2 was ridiculous when I switched to progressive scan over the component cable.  I basically can't tolerate playing games on a standard TV anymore simply because of plain old 480p.

Also, yes, Wii will support widescreen.

Well that's good to hear.  480p will will look just fine on my 42 inch plasma from the distance I'll be sitting.  How are you getting 480p out of your PS2?  Does that require some sort of special adapter?  The distortion from stretching is just too much for me to bear in most games.

A lot of new titles (since Gran Turismo 4 came out) support 480p and 16x9 right there in the options menu. You do of course need component since S-Video and Composite can't carry the signal. But special adapter? Nah, it's not like the Gamecube, you can get a 3rd party one for 6 bucks wherever. Some of the older games required you hold down square or something when you turned on the PS2 to activate 480p. On that note, you can set the system to a permanent 16x9 setting in the options screen that loads when you don't have a disc in, but it's questionable about whether or not it's just curtains.

Another note, when you switch to using the component cable (it is just a cable, not a dongle or anything wacky) you will also have to use the optical sound port.  The digital sound is of course better, but make sure that you have an optical port on your sound system or there might be foul language.

Personally I just deal with the stretch on games that don't support 16x9... which is most of them.  San Andreas does, but other names escape me.  I'd rather have a good picture that is stretched than a crap picture that is proportioned correctly.