Thousands of gamers awoke this morning to find the familiar blue glow of the Nintendo Wii illuminating the darkness. Instead of a message from another Wii user they were greeted with an announcement from Nintendo. Today the Wii News channel is available, where full access and functionality is only a system update away.

Sporting a menu interface, the Wii News Channel provides a comfortable viewing experience. Users can view news based on a number of categories, or go to the globe, which is similar to the one used in the Wii Weather Channel. News articles from around the world can be seen and selected from the interactive map. Using Wii Connect 24, the news should be fed at a constant rate into the system, all of which is provided by the Associated Press.

World famous game developer Square-Enix has announced today that they are going to use Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 to help ease game development in the next generation. The Unreal Engine 3, showcased in Epic’s own Gears of War and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 2007, Mass Effect and Bioshock, seems an odd choice for Square-Enix, famous for the anime styled Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series.

Square Enix’s Taku Murata had this to say about the announcement:

The complexity of next-generation game systems featuring HD graphics and multi-core parallel processing poses a number of technological challenges to our game development. However, we can expedite our game development process significantly while allowing extra time and resources to be spent on game design and mechanics by establishing an effective technology platform. The technology platform for game development is becoming more important than ever. I’m excited to be partnering with Epic Games in such an important area.

While use of the Unreal Engine 3 will definitely help cut down the cost of game development and allow for easy cross-platform releases (Square-Enix has mentioned that they want to support more platforms this generation), one wonders what the fate of Square-Enix’s own White Engine will be?

Source: Square-Enix Acquires Unreal Engine 3

After the last year’s E3 and the news of Gamecube to Wii move, not much has been released about the latest game in the Paper Mario franchise. According to the latest Nintendo Power, in April 2007, gamers can look forward to a new Mario adventure. Controlling the classic plumber will be handled using the sideways Wii controller position (NES-style). Gameplay is a mixture of 2D and 3D platforming and players can switch between the two gameplay styles using the A button. In tradition with other Paper Mario games, extra damaged can be inflicted upon an enemy by performing the right action at the right time. In this case, actions will involves things like shaking the Wii controller. There will be other important uses for the Wii controller as will, raising the question of why it was even announced as a Gamecube title to begin with.

Source: Codename Revolution (Update 7)

As is common practice every Monday, Nintendo has added some new games to the Wii shop channel. However, instead of the usual deluge of shmups and 1st gen NES games, Nintendo is bringing us something large, something epic, something legendary…

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No doubt you may have heard about Super Columbine Massacre RPG and how it was savagely and unjustly pulled from the Slamdance Gorilla Game Maker Competition. Several finalists have withdrawn their games in protest. Because inquiring BRU readers want to know, I have reviewed the gory game in question. Has art once again been trodden upon by cowardly censorship? Let’s take a deeper look at Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

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Officials from Microsoft have announced that Q-Entertainment’s music puzzle game Lumines Live will receive three bonus packs, each value priced for a month, following online backlash to its previous break-out pricing.

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That is right, The Evergreen State College and the Giant Robot Appreciation Society (GRAS) is proud to present the annual two day anime extravaganza on March 17th and 18th, 2007. This is a free convention, with hosted anime showings, game rooms, cosplay events and more jpop anime wackiness than you can shake a Pocky stick at.

As always, your very own Team BRU will be present on the scene. Whether or not we will be singing a new rendition of the Pokémon theme at the talent show has not yet been determined.

For more information, please refer to the following links:

• Free Anime Convention Details
• Giant Robot Appreciation Society Livejournal Page
• The Evergreen State College

We hope to see you there.

Welcome all members, new an old. A lot of changes will be occurring within the next few months, and I hope that you all will enjoy thy new look and style for Blinky’s R Us. Look forward to news and editorials about games, movies, anime and other hobbies that you enjoy. In addition, new BRU movies and games are on the horizon, so keep checking in for all of our great new updates.

Yup… I’ve decided to turn the site into a wordpress! Once I figure everything out, this place shall probably become pretty cool!