You might remember Anascape Ltd, the company that sued Microsoft and Nintendo back in 2006 for controller patent infringement. Well, they’re getting a huge payday of $21 million. A jury found that Nintendo’s Wii Classic, WaveBird, and Gamecube controller designs are all guilty of violating Anascape’s patents. Nintendo will of course appeal, probably telling the judge that nothing can touch them while they are using Mario’s “star power”.

Microsoft settled the case before the matter went to trial. Aside from this case, how many of you have ever heard of Anascape? Do they provide any products or services? Not really, aside from getting money for patents. They need a few Goombas sent their way.

Of all the emotions we go through when playing games, frustration is probably the dominant one. Here, we have a psycological profile of the gamecube come to life. In the fall of 2003, Kathryn Elliot was asked to pick up a product, analyze the intricacies of color involved, then redesign it based on a dominant emotion associated with it. She chose Nintendo’s GameCube, so it was naturally going to depict frustration. She named it the Frustration Game Cube. Or Frube. It’s designed to aggravate, portray and possibly even relieve a player’s frustration, with Frube’s many changes.

To highlight an element of frustration in the color scheme of the gaming device, she colored the GameCube purple and yellow, which are aggressive colors. The shape of Frube further irritates as it will no longer sit on a shelf easily. Some other design changes are asymmetrical position of the front plug-in panel and a jagged cut lid, which makes it difficult to figure out which side opens and how.

Nintendo has announced the launch of its WiiWare game download service for the Nintendo Wii. This launch comes almost a year after Nintendo announced the WiiWare game development platform last June. If you’ve hooked up your Wii game console to the Internet you can connect to the Wii shop channel, buy some Wii points and start downloading some new games online.

The Wii points exchange rate is at $1 USD to 100 Wii points and the online games run from 500 to 1,500 Wii points each with six games initially available. The service offers games built my independent developers that they can then post and sell through the Wii Shop Channel. The initial game lineup is different in the U.S. than those launching in Japan with the single exception of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As a King, which launches in both.

The NES Coffee Table is one of the coolest mods we’ve seen recently. Get this, it’s not just decorative. You can actually use it as a controller during game play, and it also provides excellent space for storing away all of your gaming gear.

There’s only one problem that I can see. It’s a conversation piece for sure, but once your guests see it, that’s ALL they are going to talk about, asking a zillion questions, like “how much?” and “will you make me one?”.
Check out a video below.

All had been quiet on the Chinese front, so I knew we were about due for another Wii knockoff. I guess the Vii and the Vii2 weren’t cutting it for cheapasses who want to play games, so they upped the ante.

China Shenzhen Firstsing Company Limited, a company who brought us an unnecessary cooling fan for the Wii(And probably some other wacky stuff), now gives us a 7-in-1 gaming console. It looks alot like the Wii. You’ll get amazing 16-bit graphics technology, as well as sports games that are “similar to those on the Wii, but more cheaper,”. They even threw in a wireless gamepad, and 2 remote controls that look oddly familiar. Looks like they’ve also done away with the old fashioned CD and replaced it with a small but long cutting edge cartridge. You’ll also get the shown attachments, so you can spank yourself after buying it. Better yet, have someone else do it while you say “Thank you sir. May I have another.”

This week EA announced the release of Boom Blox for the Nintendo Wii, the first game created by the company in partnership with Steven Spielberg. The game takes players through a destructive path of blowing their way through puzzling challenges in 5 different “worlds” as a single player, co-op or multi-player modes for up to 4 players at a time.

The game features more than two dozen “blocky” characters, each with their own personality and of course with Steve Spielberg involved there ended up being a lot of “explosive action” throughout the game. Through funny gestures by the characters and using some potentially destructive tools in the game such as bowling balls and fire hoses players can bust their way through the challenges.

We all hate buying batteries and if you’ve bought Wii Fit, chances are you and your enormous love handles are going to go through many batteries. Luckily for you, Nyko has a solution in the form of their new Energy Pak for the balance board.

The Pak installs on the bottom of the board, making it easy to plug in and recharge without having to take the device out or turn the board over. Because God forbid you burn the 1 or 2 calories it would take to turn the board over. You can get yours starting May 19th for $19.99. Now get to work tubby.

I just found myself back in 1984, but in an alternate reality. If I can I’m gonna stay awhile, cause this redesigned NES kicks all kinds of ass. Look at those curves. The controllers look like delicious and super sexy candy bars.

You can thank Javier Segovia, a digital artist from Spain, for this magnificent bit of eye candy. This is his vision of an updated, redesigned Nintendo Entertainment System. Appropriately, he calls it reNESED. Oh yeah. Several geeks have just wet themselves and have become drooling vegetables.

Walmart is moving in a more creative direction for the latest upcoming holiday and is promoting Nintendo’s Wii Fit as a “perfect gift for moms” for this Mothers Day. The retail giant has thrown traditional flowers and candy out the window as the Nintendo product is dominating the Walmart website home page with pre-orders for just under $90. The orders even come with a $10 gift card to Walmart so you can come back and get yourself a little something extra later on. The site’s home page portrays kids and men using the Wii Fit board as well, not to miss out on any type of demographic.

Walmart’s Mothers Day Wii Fit pre-order promotion with the gift card runs through May 11 and the Wii Fit will officially launch on May 19 for $89.99. Walmart will ship any pre-orders on or shortly after May 21 and ensures consumers that they been working with Nintendo to have adequate inventory to fill the pre-orders.

If you love your Mii enough to immortalize it forever, you’ll love this idea. Mii Sculptures are finally available for purchase. All you have to do is fork over $79 and a copy of your Mii and this guy will hand-craft it just for you.

He’s done famous Miis like Michael Jackson, Woody Allen and Bill Gates and they really do look like the actual person. Since these are hand made, they’ll take around 3 to 4 weeks to complete. Probably more if he gets a ton of orders. I’m guessing we can look forward to blow-up Miis in the near future as well.

Looks like Nyko isn’t afraid of adding a bit of color to your Wii accessories. Nyko’s Kama wireless Wii Nunchuk can be had now, online, before the official retail launch coming in May.

Should you decide to buy now, you can get a limited edition grey, black, pink or gold version(The gold is really black with a gold bird on it) that will sync wirelessly to your Wiimote adapter. The limited edition won’t be available in stores, so if you want some cool colors you better get them fast. Am I the only one who thinks these things look naughty now that they have some color?

This news may be a little bit old for some, but just in case you hadn’t heard the Wii Fit game from Nintendo which is bundled with the Wii Fit Balance Board has gotten an official release date and now an official price. $89.99 will be the price tag associated with Wii Fit on its May 19 US launch date. This price includes both the game and the board bundled together.

In the short time since the announcement, pre-orders for the Wii Fit on Amazon has moved up into the number one position with an 885,500 percent increase in just a day, not to mention all the accessories. Needless to say, it looks like this is going to be another hot item for Nintendo this year.

Nintendo

The same dirty Wii syndrome that affected Super Smash Bros is now coming to the forefront again with the launch of Mario Kart. You may or may not be able to get the game to play, depending on how filthy your Wii is. The disc reading laser is having a hard time cutting through the dirt, due to the fact that it’s a double-layer disc with a large memory capacity. Those who may be heavy smokers have a layer of nicotine on the lens, for instance.

Reports of the launch of Mario Kart Wii this month in Japan show that the game is having this same problem just months after Smash Bros. Nintendo will clean it for you, but that means you’ll have to be without it for awhile and frankly that sucks. Keep your Wii clean. A clean Wii is a happy Wii people.

Having grown up with arcade games, I love playing some of the old school games with arcade sticks. If you’re like me and are looking for a good arcade stick for the Wii, look no further. The Wii version of the Neo Geo Stick 2 is an arcade-style, ball-top controller that was previously available for the PS2 from SNK-Playmore and Sega Logistics.

This new edition looks like it’s still got non-analog L and R buttons hugging the four primary convex buttons like parentheses. It would appear that they’ve decided to keep the classy black color too, which seems odd for the Wii, but it’s a beauty. It’s probably the best arcade stick I’ve seen for the Wii. You can get it right now for $59.90.

The Yinlips YDP-G68 is yet another unfortunately named device. It’s also an MP4 player that comes with a 2.8 inch TFT screen, 4GB storage, supports SD/MMC card, 1.3-megapixel camera, FM radio, AV-OUT, AV-IN and supports a memory card (up to 2GB).

This device also supports 8-32bit NES format games(The downloadable variety of course) and it plays MP3, WMA, AMR, ACC, WAV, ASF, 3GP, MPEG-4 and EXIF2.1 formats. The Yinlips is no Nintendo DS, despite their foldable design, but if you’re in a what the hell kind of frame of mind, it’s available now for $96.55.