A gorilla at the San Diego zoo recently came by his own Nintendo DS portable game console. The DS appeared in the gorilla habitat when a boy visiting the zoo dropped it inside.

The gorilla picked the DS up and proceeded to mess with it to try and figure out exactly what it was. I wonder what he would have done if the thing was tuned on when he picked it up.

Never heard of R4 cards? R4 game cards are basically blank cards for the Nintendo DS that can be used to load homebrew software on to the DS. They can also be used for pirated Nintendo DS games.

But now the High Court in the UK has just made selling, importing and advertising the sale of R4 cards illegal in the UK. Needless to say, Nintendo is happy about this. They released the following statement:

Once again this year, Greenpeace has given Nintendo the lowest score out of all the electronics companies it graded. However, this year, Nintendo’s score was up! They scored 1.8 out of 10. I guess that’s a bit of progress.

Greenpeace says that Nintendo scored most points on chemicals; it has put games consoles on the market that have PVC-free internal wiring and has banned phthalates and is also monitoring the use of antimony and beryllium. And though it is endeavoring to eliminate the use of PVC, it has not set a timeline for its phase-out yet.

We have already mentioned that three different retailers had pegged May 9 as the launch date for a new black Wii bundle. Nintendo has officially confirmed that new bundle is incoming today.

The new Wii will ship in black color and will include Wii Sports, Sports Resort, and the Wii MotionPlus accessory as we mentioned the other day. Nintendo also says that additional black remotes and Nunchuks will be available as well.

EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich believes that Nintendo will be releasing a new handheld in the next 15 months, and that they will make the announcement within the next eight months. That’s not all that surprising since they have to keep up with all of the other tech out there.

There isn’t any solid evidence here, so take it with the usual grain of salt for now. Though if true, I wonder what the big selling points will be. They have to keep Mario in step with the other handhelds and the DS is in serious need of a refresh.

Lots of people out there who own a Nintendo DSi carry it with them everywhere. If you can get the devices you take with you everywhere to pull duty for more than one use, it is a great thing. Nero has announced new software for the DSi that improves its music capabilities.

The new software is called the Nero Music2Go and is the second iteration of the Nero MobileSync platform that is a hardware agnostic toolkit for customizable PC applications. The software allows the conversion of music from CDs and files stored on a PC to AAC format.

Nintendo has filed Trademark for the name Zii. Huge mistake for such a large company since Creative already owns it. Could be they want to call the next Wii, the Zii, but Creative might disagree.

The trademark recently popped up on the Japanese trademark database. The filing covers video games and electronic devices, but contains little information. Our guess is that it might be the HD Wii that we’ve heard rumors about. Hopefully more info will come soon.

The original Wii Fit was a huge seller for Nintendo with the game topping chart lists and selling as many copies as Nintendo could ship. Since Wii Fit launched it has sold almost 8 million copies in the US alone. Sunday marked the official launch of the new Wii Fit Plus.

The new game comes in two bundles, one has the game software and the balance board and the other is the software alone for users who purchased the original Wii Fit. Nintendo also says that the game will import user data from the original Wii Fit to the new one as well.

Pretty much everyone has heard by now that the Nintendo Wii is getting a price cut to $199. The cut has been reported as confirmed; but that confirmation was from a third party, not directly from Nintendo.

Nintendo has now gone officially official with the new price cut, which is set to go into effect on Sunday September 27. That is the day that we were expecting the price cut to hit on. I wonder if Nintendo rushed the official announcement out because so many leaks of the new price had been made.

Nintendo has been offering its slick new DSi portable game console for a while now and it has proven to be popular with mobile gamers. One of the deals that Nintendo is offering to sweeten the DSi pot is free points that can be redeemed for a downloadable game title for the console.

Nintendo is reminding shoppers today that anyone who purchases a DSi before October 5 2009 at 12 p.m. Pacific time and signs onto the Nintendo DSi shop will be given 1000 free Nintendo DSi points. That is about a $10 value, 2,000 DSi points cost $19.99.

The Nintendo Wii has an Internet connection, which allows players to compete against each other in games online. The Wi-Fi access also allows the user to surf the Internet assuming the own the Internet Channel. The fact that you had to pay for the ability to surf the web on the Wii always bothered me.

Nintendo has announced that it is now offering the Internet Channel free of charge. The channel previously cost users 500 Wii points to purchase. The Internet Channel can now be downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel.

That black Nintendo Wii console that popped up not so long ago looked pretty cool, the problem was the console never made it to America for those tired of the white version we can get. Nintendo President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime announced at a conference that we will at least be getting some new color accessories for the Wii and new DSi colors.

A black Wii Remote, Wii Motion Plus, and Nunchuck will be coming, alas the black Wii itself will not be offered it seems. Wii Fit Plus has a new launch date and it will be coming on October 4 at $99 with the balance board or $19.99 of the software only.

Typically, the games that consoles come with aren’t things that most of us find interesting. When I bought my Wii, I didn’t think much about Wii Sports being a cool game. As it turns out, I spend more time playing Wii Sports with family and friends than I do with any other game I own for the Wii.

The follow-up to Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, is now shipping and Nintendo has announced that the game is selling very well indeed. Nintendo says that between July 26 and August 3 it sold 500,000 copies of Sports Resort in the U.S. alone.

This NES Controller will keep your business cards safe, while acknowledging that you are a proud geek and a Nintendo fan. It’s a business card holder with 2 compartments. The first is for your business cards, the second compartment lets you hold other people’s business cards that you receive when meeting them.

This retro tribute to classic gaming is available from Geek Stuff 4U and for around $31 toward the end of October of 2009.

The black Wii and red DSi are coming from Nintendo Japan, not Colorware. The black Wii (aka “KURO Wii”) has been rumored for over two years now. It’s nice to finally have some color options for both the Wii and DSi.

The black Wii with black Wiimote, nunchuck, and classic controller will hit Japan on August 1st for ¥25,000 and the ¥18,900 red DSi on July 11th.