Namco Bandai have snapped up a Wii-exclusive sequel to obscure Xbox Live Arcade management sim Outpost Kaloki X. Developers Wahoo are keen to stress that although they look the same, it’s not a conversion but rather a fully-fledged project built for Wii.

The story in Space Station Tycoon involves Shawn and his monkey Tam, who are in charge of setting up new space stations and managing their economies. There are all sorts of environmental problems to deal with (asteroid storms, heat rays from nova suns, etc) plus fussy customers and other issues. The icon-based interface has been designed to work solely with the Wii-remote, although there is optional control using the nunchuck if anybody wants to needlessly complicate things. Co-op play has been promised but Wahoo remain secretive over WiiConnect24 possibilities.

It’s out in the summer, and yes, this is the type of thing the Wii should be good at handling. The Wii-remote is the next best thing to having a mouse in your hand. Some RTS games next, please!

Battlestations: Midway unexpectedly (at least to us) flew to the top of the charts, which proved (again, to us) that there’s a bigger demand for air combat sims than anybody (we) realised. Luckily for fans of the genre, there’s another around the corner in the form of Heatseeker. Notably it’ll be Codemasters’ first game for Wii – they only published one GameCube game, fact fans – but it’s the PlayStation 2 version that we’ve had the pleasure of playing.

Various publications have dubbed this ‘Burnout in the sky’, and for a number of good reasons. The first and foremost is the inclusion of an ‘Impact Cam’ – occasionally when you lock onto an enemy and fire a missile, the camera will switch to a view of the missile smashing a rival into tiny pieces. It doesn’t add anything to the gameplay – not in the way that the ‘After Touch’ system did in the later Burnouts – but it’s still pretty nifty. The explosions are nice and meaty (there’s infinite ammo, incidentally) and we’re quite fond of zooming through patches of cloud at top speed with the customary motion-blur in tow. The sound effects aren’t quite as roaring as we’d like, but there’s plenty of chatter between pilots to help create an atmosphere.

The controls are easy to master, but we do have a complaint – to accelerate you need to push the right analogue stick forward, while to lock onto an enemy the square button needs to be pressed. It’s very tricky to keep both held down at once, as both are on the same side of the controller. Hopefully in the full game one of the shoulder buttons can be assigned to lock on.

It’s due out at the end of March on PlayStation 2, PSP and Wii, and should appeal to those who enjoy the Ace Combat and Deadily Skies titles. And maybe Konami’s Top Gun LCD game. Their Turtles one was better though.

One of the biggest complaints aimed at the Wii thus far is that too many publishers are pushing out half-arsed conversions of PlayStation 2 titles.

Sadly, this isn’t going to improve any time soon, as budget developers Data Design Interactive are re-releasing twelve of their PlayStation 2 efforts, including platfomrer Ninjabread Man, broomstick racer Billy the Wizard and the 18-rated Earache Extreme Metal Racing. Although it’s good to see a big slew of ‘new’ games for the Wii, the fact that most of their games can already be found in Poundland – albeit on PC – speaks for their quality.

The first six are due in the second quarter, with another six towards the end of the year. No mention has been made of price, but if they’re any more than a tenner then they’re having a laugh – some of the games in their line-up are nearly three years old.

Becoming the fastest selling game in the series, and taking more than half of the week’s full price PlayStation 2 software sales, Final Fantasy XII inevitably tops the chart. Crackdown is #2 though, and the fourth fastest selling Xbox 360 title to date.

There might be budget PC toss on GDL’s Grabbit label swarming over chart, but the main thing is that Little Britain drops 13 places. Excite Truck – which really is cocking excellent, and frankly the best thing on Wii by a country mile – gains 15 places too. If it reaches the top ten, I will come and kiss each and everyone of you. Note: I won’t.

The Behemoth obviously haven’t finished their four-player medieval brawler Castle Crashers yet, as it has been announced that this Wednesday’s Xbox Live Arcade release is Metal Slug-style shooter Alien Hominid HD, for 800 points (£6.80). Thanks to the awfully helpful Microsoft Points Converter for doing the math(s).

In the US, Alien Hominid was only released on PlayStation 2 and GameCube, whereas here in Europe made it out on PlayStation 2, Xbox and Game Boy Advance. So although it isn’t a new game, it’ll be the first time that US Xboxers have been able to give it a go. New features include improved visuals and two-player online co-op play.

Last week EA announced the 16-player online Wing Commander Arena for Xbox Live Arcade. There are some shots over at Magic Box.

We’ve seen what Take-Two have done here and we approve. That is, release Throne of Agony well before Uwe Boll’s silver screen take on Dungeon Siege comes out. If you’re thinking, “But why do that and miss out on the extra publicity?” then you obvious don’t know who Uwe Boll is.

We’re in RPG hack ‘n’ slash territory again, which makes this comparable to the established Untold Legends series. At the start you’re presented with three types of character to choose from – Shadow Elf, Warlord and Battle Mage – each of which is joined by a non-playable follower. You can’t kit out your follower with new armour, but you can teach them new moves in the various villages dotted around the map. Later it’s possible to get a pet too, options including a lap dragon and a hawk. And a mule called Ol’ Bessie.

The characters level up surprisingly quickly, although it makes sense given that this isn’t quite as epic as its PC brethren, clocking in at around 15 hours. It’s a respectable length, but there’s a lightweight feel to it evident in the pace, and the skill required during combat.

It moves at a fair old pace, and should your follower ever get lost they warp back to where they should be in an instant. The variety of enemies is commendable, in that you’re not just beating up the same old faces again and again; a prehistoric realm packed full of raptors and other dinosaurs is a particular highlight.

Things do get repetitive after a few hours, and the loading times – and frequency – frustrate, but its fair to say that the developers have achieved what they set out to do: create a console friendly version of the PC originals.

Here’s some news to ruin your weekend: we’re in for at least another five years – that’s five years – of Crazy Frog games. Over one million idiots have bought the dire Crazy Frog Racer games so far. And each and every one deserves to be hit in the head with a rusty hammer.

The only slightly good news is that new license holders Myriad Interactive promise that we’ll see a “wider variety of video games genres”.

I’m betting on Crazy Frog Football next. No, wait – that’d be too tricky for the mindless programmers to deal with.

If our visitor numbers are down this weekend I’ll put it down to Final Fantasy XII and Crackdown both being released today. I’ve played through the demo of Crackdown a few times and it seems like good fun, especially once your explosive skills have been upgraded a few times. As I understand it, Final Fantasy XII has a new battle system that has managed to rejuvenate the franchise. I haven’t heard a bad word about it so far.

I expect that there will be some (stupid) people disappointed when they get their copy of Crackdown home though, expecting there to be a Halo 3 demo in the case. It would appear that the beta invite won’t come into effect for a few months yet.

Apparently quite good marble/maze thing Kororinpa is the only Wii release this week, while on PlayStation 2 and PSP there’s Ghost Rider. Even hard-nosed magazine Edge were surprised at how good it is, describing it as a mixture of God of War and Devil May Cry. It’s bound to be better than the film at any rate.

It’s not often that I’m impressed by the standard of game-related interviews, but GameDaily BIZ did an excellent job of making Nintendo’s Perrin Kaplan flap about on the floor, attempting to convince anyone that the GameCube might still be worth buying.

It’s all in this quote:

“Are we producing any more GameCubes? No. But do we have the inventory there for people to still purchase? Yes.”

Translation: “We’ve still got GameCubes hanging around, so please buy them.” Why? Well, she explains with an analogy:

“I mean, I wasn’t the first to buy an iPod; by the time I bought it, it came to a price where I wanted it to be and a look the way I wanted it to look. So we’re not selling GameCube to the people who are hardcore players and want all the gadgetry; we’re going after the people who never really bought a system before, or finally it’s at a price that they can afford for their family.”

Except you’re effectively saying you bought a newer iPod, not an old model once newer models were available. Anyway, new music would have worked on an old iPod – and Kaplan confirms in the interview that Nintendo have stopped supporting the GameCube – so the analogy really holds no metaphorical water.

You’re forgiven if you hadn’t heard of Mazes of Fate before. It’s a US only release at present, has been put together by a small unknown developer based in Argentina, and appears to have had only a small print run. It’s odd that there hasn’t been much coverage of it though, as not only is it very playable and surprisingly fast paced for an RPG, but it has been in development since March 2003. Which also explains why it isn’t on DS.

From the outset it’s evident that a lot of time, love and effort have gone into it. It’s very easy to get to grips with, and rewarding from the start – within the first ten minutes you’re well into your first mission, that being to rid an old lady’s cellar of giant rats. In first person, no less: Mazes of Fate’s trump card is its 3D engine which is really quite fancy. The wall textures are nicely drawn, packed full of detail and repetition has been kept to a minimum to make each area look significantly different from the last. There are all sorts of puzzles, traps, switches and other objects to interactive with, and in the top right hand corner there’s a tiny map that serves its purpose perfectly.

If you’ve played the 8-bit classic Dungeon Master then you’ll probably see this as a spiritual successor, although you aren’t limited to exploring dungeons – there are also caves, forests, tombs and a multi-storey tower with a power hungry Mage to overthrow at the top.

Combat is pretty simplistic – it’s simply a case of running up to an enemy and tapping the A button to bring up the attack menu before they have a chance to give you a clout. Up to three people can be in your party, each of which can be equipped with various weapons and armour, while experience points can be used to improve skills such as lock picking.

When you’re not running around you’re talking to people in the various villages and settlements, looking for clues of where to go next, learning new fighting manoeuvres, or picking up new missions. The script isn’t super slick, though there is the option to employ a sarcastic twang during conversations, and you can pester for rewards. The map screen graphics are very crude, but there are no random battles and it takes mere seconds to get from A to B, with the speed that the lead character runs at.

Although there’s a quest log, sometimes progression can be hindered by something stupid – like missing an item of importance in a dungeon – so you do have to backtrack or spend a few minutes just retracing your steps. It’s a bit annoying, as otherwise it’s very easy to progress, in that you can play it for fifteen minutes or so and actually achieve something.

Asda started selling DVD players – region free ones, no less – for a pathetic £9 a few weeks back, and now in another move to shake up their electrical section, from tomorrow they’ll be selling slimline PlayStation 2 consoles for £49. Posters have already gone up in stores, pointing out that the offer is strictly one per customer.

Earlier this week Play.com dropped the price of Xbox 360 Core Packs to £149.99 (or £194.99 with a game and a memory unit),while Makro will happily sell you a Premium 360 Pack for £199.99 if you become a member.

That’s nothing though – a short while ago Tesco were forced to give away Xbox 360s due to a £2.16 discrepancy in prices. Their policy (which is soon to change) states that if you find a product priced up on the shelf for a different amount than appears on their tills, then you get the item for free.

A few years ago, the US Patent and Trademark Office website was a great place to uncover games before they were announced. But companies have pretty much stopped trademarking titles before announcing them, to stop us from having fun searching the database.

But fuck the man, we can still have fun with the USPTO. We just have to be a bit more inventive.

Let’s look at Wii. It was first trademarked by England’s very own Wilkinson Sword in 1986, but as ‘W’ and the Roman numeral ‘II’, which isn’t quite the same. It’s a long dead trademark, anyway.

And what Nintendo have been doing with it is interesting enough in itself. There are ten separate filings trademarking Wii, explicitly covering just about anything game-related you can think of, and quite a lot besides. For example, “umbrellas and their parts” and “processed grain food”.

Evory Technologies of Philadelphia have a trademark for Wii as well, with a lot of game applications listed. But having been made three days after Nintendo’s registrations, it’s presumably as much use to the company as a PlayStation 3 pre-order allocation is to a UK retailer. Satire, there.

Wii Sports and Wii Play are both registered too, with a curious four entries for Wii Play. Nintendo evidently thought it was worth covering Wii Play for clothing from bandanas to wrist bands. Wii Fit was trademarked at the same time. Has that been used? Maybe it’s in Wii Sports somewhere.

See, that was fun, wasn’t it? Not as relevant as a load of potential Grand Theft Auto subtitles – one of the USPTO’s finest hauls some years back – but a lot of fun nonetheless.