EA has revealed the known -- but never officially announced -- sequel to Boom Blox for Wii. According to the press release, EA's Boom Blox Bash Party will be out this spring, featuring 400 new levels and a greater emphasis on multiplayer -- as evidenced by the "Party" in the title. (As well as the "Bash" -- which is a kind of party, we believe.)"Boom Blox Bash Party is a wild social gaming experience," said Steven Spielberg, who is involved in the new game in whatever nebulous capacity in which he was involved in the first title. "We know families and friends really enjoyed playing the original Boom Blox together, so we designed more explosive multiplayer experiences with Boom Blox Bash Party."Even more exciting, BBBP now has online integration for its level editor, allowing players to share their destructible Mario sprites with the community at large. EA will offer its own downloadable levels as well.
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Capcom announced today via their official blog that Mercs, the Sega Genesis sequel to Commando, will be available "soon" on the Virtual Console in North America. It's changing the title to Wolf of the Battlefield: Mercs, which both matches the Japanese title for the game and makes the connection more explicit between this game and Capcom's XBLA/PSN release, Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3. The name change, as implied by Capcom's Seth Killian, has less to do with branding and more to do with the Mercenaries series: "Let this be a lesson kids, register your IPs!"In other Virtual Console news, the OFLC ratings board has revealed that Konami's Twinbee and Hudson's Bomberman '94 could show up on the VC soon. Twinbee for the Famicom never left Japan, though we got a sequel, Stinger.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

You know what happens when you grow too quickly? Growing pains. With most of those nasty growing pains under control - after Monday night's relaunch of Joystiq, and rebranding of the DS and Wii Fanboy sites - we're happy to let you know that you can now filter Joystiq Nintendo for Wii or DS.How does one do it? Easy, when you see a story on Joystiq Nintendo, you'll notice it will either have a Wii tab or a DS tab (sometimes both). All you have to do is click on that tab and you'll get everything sorted for that particular platform. Only want DS news? Well, then go ahead and bookmark this link. Only want the Wii stuff? Then bookmark this link. You can subscribe to either of those links in your favorite RSS reader and absorb the site that way as well. It's that easy. And if you don't want to be bothered with scrolling down the page, you'll notice the top now has a Wii and DS tab next to the Nintendo tab. Progress, ain't it grand?When you're viewing the front page, you'll see these tabs sprinkled throughout posts; however, when you're sorting by each platform tag (DS or Wii), then you won't see those tabs (we think that makes sense). Let us know what you think in the comments below or head past the break for a guide on using the new tabs, if all of this still seems a bit over your head.

Continue reading Surprise! Introducing our DS and Wii tabs

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According to the NPD, a good exclusive does not necessarily equal good sales. The group has collected data for 2008's exclusives on each platform and, well, there have been some under-performers. On the Xbox 360 side, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts was a disappointment, selling only 140,000 units. The other exclusive on Microsoft's console, Fable 2 (Joystiq's GOTY), was more of your traditional success story with a respectable 1.2 million copies sold.And what about the industry-leading PS3? We already know MGS4 sold extremely well, but the same cannot be said (yet) for LittleBigPlanet and Resistance 2, both of which seemed to perform lower than expectations; LBP sold 611,000 copies in North America while R2 unloaded 600,000 units. As for Nintendo, well ... it won. It always does. Last we heard, Nintendo stopped making games and was in the process of building a Kirby-shaped Death Star to orbit the planet.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments