Marvelous Entertainment teases game with Zelda symbols

The Japanese publisher Marvelous Entertainment ('Harvest Moon', 'No More Heroes') has published a website showing a mysterious countdown clock bearing symbols from the 'Legend of Zelda' series.




The clock itself is in triangular shape and there is a completed Triforce logo at the top with incomplete ones in the two lower corners each. There is an unfamiliar feather dangling from the clock and the entire object rises and falls gently.

One revolution of the Zelda clock is thirty seconds, at which point it briefly glows and the second digit returns to its starting position the way it came, counter-clockwise. The main digit remains at the top, pointing to the completed Triforce logo.

The seconds counting down will end sometime early next Friday, January 23rd. When setting my internal clock forward, though, the countdown expired on September 28th 2009, at 14:13:55. Then, the numbers disappear and the (mis-spelt) message "comming soon" appears in their place.

The flash animation is called ´prepre_watch.swf´ and the source code embeds it with the command ´?update=20081228_2018´. Altering the values does not seem to make much difference, however.



I must admit that I have no idea what this could mean. It is very unlikely that Nintendo would outsource either the development or the publishing part of a Zelda game to any third party. If at all, this would have to be a spin-off.

I guess that we will know more by Friday. By then, a similar countdown on a SEGA server ends, teasing the involvement of Takao Miyoshi from one of SEGA's internal studios and showing Mario symbols.

EDIT The Sega game has been revealed as a WiiWare title.

The game is called Pole’s Big Adventure and is supposed to mock 8-bit games released on the Nintendo Entertainment system around its heyday. So that means the title will be on Nintendo’s WiiWare, pricing for Japan currently is 500 Wii Points.

The game is supposed to have inside jokes in each level. The teaser site had a mushroom and apparently in Japanese that is slang for a male’s penis. Now you add pole and a mushroom that grew when you touched it with the mouse, you are going to get a game with alot of dick jokes.

The Marvelous game turns out to be Hero 30, an old-school RPG for the PlayStation Portable.

Source: Marvelous Entertainment, Sega Nerds, IGN
Thanks to: Kotaku, Joystiq, Some Guy

Three tidbits of exclusive info and rumours

I have three little tidbits of exclusive info and rumours for you. The first one concerns troubled developer Factor 5. I can confirm to you that work on all current projects is continuing. Expect an official announcement within two weeks.

Secondly, concerning 'Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop' and fears of no more than fifteen enemies on screen at any one time, fear not. I have just spoken to someone who has played a current build of the game. While there will not be a hundred zombies on screen, there will be a sufficient amount, I was told. Basically, you can expect a few dozens of them rather than one dozen. This will be a really cool game, I understand.

Lastly, I have some reason to believe that Silicon Knights ('Eternal Darkness', 'Too Human') may be working on a Wii title. This is slightly going out on a limb here. But, like I said, I have some reason to believe so.

There you go. I said it.

Wii in Europe outsells PS3 worldwide

Nintendo of Europe has published Wii and DS 2008 sales figures for the territory on their press server (press registration required). The numbers show that Nintendo sold more Wii units in Europe (14,2 million) than Sony sold PS3 units in the entire world (13 million).

In 2008, 8,3 million units of the home console were sold. This is an increase of 58 percent compared to 2007 and constitutes the highest yearly sales of a home console in Europe ever. This increases the number of Wii console in European households to more than 14,2 million.

According to Nintendo, the DS sold 11,2 million units in Europe - the highest sales of any console in Europe ever. Altogether, 31 million DS units have been sold in Europe.

So while Wii sales in Japan are reported to have dropped 20 percent in 2008, European sales for the same period were up almost 60 percent compared to the previous year.

Source: Nintendo of Europe (press registration required)