When Sega announced nine days ago that they'd be releasing another installment in their decade-old tennis franchise, aptly titled Virtua Tennis 2009, we thought they'd made a typo when revealing the systems the game would be gracing. You're telling us that a sport whose main interactive mechanic involves the deft swinging of a handheld object isn't getting the Wii treatment? Sega, are you pot-high?The fog of confusion has apparently lifted -- in a recent press release, Sega revealed that Virtua Tennis 2009 will, in fact, be coming to the Wii, bringing with it the roster and features from the 360, PS3 and PC versions of the title. These features include online play, and casual "Court Games" minigames that should go over swimmingly at Wii-based family functions. It will also share the May release window with the other versions of the game, bringing it to store shelves just in time for tennis season, if such a thing actually exists.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Speaking to Eurogamer, Resident Evil 5 producer Masachika Kawata intimated that he'd like to see more of Resident Evil on Nintendo's waggling financial giant. Said Kawata, "Personally, I would like to create something on Wii in the Resident Evil family." He further stated that the team doesn't know what it would be, as it's been hard at work on Resident Evil 5, but asked gamers to "watch this space." Thus far, staring at our computer monitor has resulted in nothing but eyestrain.Kawata also spoke briefly to concerns raised about Resident Evil 5's control scheme, saying that the team "reflected" on the control scheme for some time. While Kawata expects some may dislike the controls, he -- and the team -- believe it "does not reflect negatively on the game as a whole," but is instead "part of a forward-looking process." Kawata hopes that even those who dislike the controls will enjoy the overall product.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Moon developer Renegade Kid has pulled its fangs out of the Count's supple neck, revealing in a post on the company's website that the secret "Dracula" game it had been working on with Gamecock "is no longer in development." The post goes on to say that the IP is still owned by Renegade Kid, and the company is open the revisiting the project "should an opportunity to resurrect Son of the Dragon present itself in the future." Having only now become aware of the game's true name, with little else known of the rumored Wii project beyond some early artwork from last August it's difficult to feel too drained by this news.The same goes for Renegade Kid, it seems, with studio boss Jools Watsham brushing aside the news with a standard 'no comment,' telling us instead that the studio's "current focus is on the development of our new game, which we'll have more news on soon." Whatever it is, we hope his excitement is enough to pull the stake out of players' broken hearts.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

We're pleased to see people around the internet playing the wonderful Retro Game Challenge and sharing their experiences with the not-actually-old games found in the collection. One of the most unexpectedly enjoyable parts of the game is conversing with the young version of the maniacal Arino (Game Center CX host Shinya Arino), who represents a startlingly authentic young gamer of the '80s -- sitting with him is eerily reminiscent of our own NES experiences with friends. But Arino's dialogue isn't entirely authentic -- a few anachronisms slip through, like The Wizard references made years before the movie actually came out. The screen above shows one such anachronism, seemingly a commentary on the current state of third-party games on Nintendo systems. We didn't hear the term "shovelware" until the early CD-ROM era, when it was used to describe a disc crammed full of old games -- ironically, precisely what Retro Game Challenge would be, were it not composed entirely of new games.Despite the use of the term "shovelware," Arino isn't even complaining! He concludes that even the most boring games can be enjoyable.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments