On Wednesday, Nintendo released a firmware upgrade for the Wii which featured a couple of spiffy things.

1) Wii Store revamp
2) Clock on dashboard
3) Reorder friends in your Address book (thank god)

but two other things came shuffled underneath the rug that were not documented by Nintendo.

The Good) Hey, now you can use a USB keyboard when writing messages and a couple other programs. You can't use it on the Wii Browser, but give 'em a few months.

The Bad) All Freeloaders are now rendered useless on the Wii. The freeloader was a legit swap disc used to play any region's Gamecube games. Very handy for importers.

I'm not too pissed off about the freeloader. Nintendo Puzzle Collection is the only worthwhile import. I suppose someday I'd like to play Giftpia or Doshi the Giant, but those days can wait.
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This morning, Nintendo released another little update available for Free in the Shop Channel. It's Metriod Prime 3 preview featuring two movies and some other stuff. You can watch the full trailer for the game, and also another video highlighting gameplay?

It's about time Nintendo got around to doing something comparable to Xbox and Playstation. The more game videos the better, but it should REALLY include a demo of the game. Hopefully, they'll do this with Mario Galaxy, Smash Brothers, and Mario Kart, in some way.

With this preview, Nintendo has dubbed August as the Month of Metroid. The next 3 Mondays will feature a Metroid release. August 13th, the original Metroid will be available on Virtual Console. boring. August 20th, Super Metroid will be on VC. I think this is the first time Super Metroid has been re-released. I will definitely pick that up when I get home from work.

And August 27th, Metroid Prime 3 will be finally be available.
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Fun times on the Wii. Nintendo is starting to show that they are heading in the right direction, but the Virtual Console, and the Wii in general, NEEDS to have demos in some way. Sure, I wouldn't have bought Big Brain if i played a demo, but I might pick up another game I'm not expecting.

The same goes for the DS. Have a DS Download channel you can download DS demos on.