Nintendo Bumps Wii Storage, Teases Zelda Next

— -- Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's predictably vague keynote was long on rhetoric and short of details. He pointed out that Wii sales worldwide have bumped past the magic 50 million milepost. The salient detail isn't the number but the timeframe: The Wii is officially the fastest selling video game doohickey in history. Add 100 million DS handhelds sold worldwide to Nintendo's bragging rights.

The rest of the keynote was short on anything revelatory. Iwata mentioned a U.S. version of the Japanese DS game Rhythm Heaven, a musical screen-tapper in which you're supposed to pair a beat with different musical tunes. He chatted up a new Wii Ware game for the Wii Balance Board dubbed Rock 'n Roll Climber that — get this — lets you mimic the motions of climbing a rock wall, then snatch up a virtual guitar and jam. He talked about a few new Virtual Console Arcade games, mostly Final Fantasy stuff like My Life as a Darklord and Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (Ahem, "The After Years"? Hey guys, what happened to the Final Fantasy XII English location team?)

Oh yeah, and Iwata mentioned a new Zelda game for the DS, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, due out sometime later this year. Think Phantom Hourglass but with an upgradeable train instead of a boat.

Let's get this straight: I love Zelda as much as the next gamer, but when Nintendo's answer to our pleas for newer, cooler games is to trot out more of the same, pardon me if I don't leap up and click my sneakers together.

Last up: A tweak to Wii Ware that'll allow gamers to save or load games straight to/from SD memory cards.

Alright, that last one's kind of cool.

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