Wolf-waggling commences early next year.

What has been rumored since early this year has finally been confirmed: Capcom and Clover's critically acclaimed adventure title, Okami, will be coming to the Wii sometime in Spring 2008.

Since the esteemed Clover Studio is no longer with us, porting duties will be handled by the extremely competent Ready At Dawn, best known for their PSP titles Daxter and the upcoming God of War: Chains of Olympus.

This has always been one of those rumors that just made too much sense not to happen, but then again, if there was any sense in the world, Clover would still be around to bring us original titles; so it's nice to see that it is coming to fruition in spite of this.

There is no word yet on whether anything aside from the requisite motion controls will be added, but if RAD can nail just that one aspect, I'll be happy. There is nothing that can ruin a good game quite like sloppy motion controls.

[via GoNintendo]

 Let your Blu-ray player try something different. 

Jonathan Mak's Everyday Shooter is almost ready to bestow its aural pleasures upon PS3 owners everywhere as it has been announced for release this Thursday for $10. The synaesthetic shooter looks all kinds of awesome and should be considered required gaming for anyone with a PS3. You already spent $600 on the console so you could pay twice as much for your movies, $10 isn't going to kill you.

It's an odd feeling to be so looking forward to a PS3 title that isn't months or years away. Along with LittleBigPlanet and echochrome, PSN is definitely starting to give XBLA a run for its (my?) money. 

All these downloadable games are starting to take their toll on my wallet. Sin and Punishment and SMB2 on VC last week, and Puzzle Quest on XBLA and Everyday Shooter on PSN this week. The first three are all sold at a premium over standard prices too!

[via Destructoid] 

At a lower price than you might have expected.

Ever since its announcement earlier this year, Rock Band has been the focus of endless speculation over how exactly it would be sold, when it would be out, and most importantly, for how much. While we've known the answer to the first question for a while, the price and release date were still up in the air. Online retailers were accepting pre-orders, with a ship date of November 20th, at $200; a pricey, but not unreasonable figure considering the contents of the bundle.

Fans will be glad to hear that the game will be in stores November 23rd at a surprisingly low price of $169.99. At that price EA/Harmonix is essentially selling you the peripherals and bundling the game with it for free. This is a very smart move; they stand to make more money on all the downloadable music they have lined up then they ever could by selling individual games. The more people they can get to buy the game, the larger the audience they'll have for selling people albums for $20 and individual songs for $2 a pop!

Still sucks about that wired guitar in the 360 version though…

[via Gamespot]

Gracias, SEGA.

Fans of the classic Dreamcast maraca game Samba de Amigo (myself included), who have been longing for a sequel for years, were given hope when a product listing for a Wii version of the game showed up on Gamestop.com. A couple months later Nintendo Power brings confirmation that the game is indeed heading to Wii in 2008.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it was played with a special Maracas controller which players would shake to the beat of the music. A sensor bar placed on the floor could detect the height of the maracas and part of the gameplay was shaking the maracas at the right height as indicated by the game.

The game was a tremendous amount of fun but had a number of strikes against it. First off, it was on the Dreamcast. Second, while the game itself was only $40, the maracas controllers were $80 a pop. If you wanted 2-player action it'd set you back $200. That's more than what the Dreamcast even cost at that point. Third, the motion sensor didn't work all that well at detecting the height you were holding the maracas, resulting in some frustrating gameplay when playing on higher difficulties.

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It's gotta be cheaper than 16 NeoGeo games on VC. 

Anyone who was considering purchasing individual NeoGeo games on Virtual Console for $9 a pop, you may want to wait a little while and see what games will be making their way on to SNK's recently announced NeoGeo Collection for the Wii. No specific titles have been mentioned but there are going to be sixteen of them, so chances are there'll at least be a few that catch your eye.

It should be interesting to see how they price this, since collections such as these usually sell for $20 and no more than $30. Quite a bit cheaper than the $144 that sixteen NeoGeo games would cost you in WiiPoints. And certainly much cheaper than the $3200 the games originally retailed for.

If there are 3-4 games on it you want, it's already paid for itself in that regard, and the rest are just gravy. I'm hoping there are at least a handful of games included that aren't 2D fighters…

[via GoNintendo]