Nintendo Power On U.S. Wii Launch Titles

The latest issue of official American Nintendo magazine Nintendo Power has revealed a number of previously unconfirmed details of the Wii launch, including some of the titles due for the proposed U.S. launch line-up. Although an official release date and price are still yet to be revealed, the Wii is widely expected to have a near worldwide launch in October or November of this year. According to Nintendo Power, there will be at least two first party Nintendo titles available at this time, in the form of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (concurrent with the GameCube version) and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. There will be at least four third party titles available at the U.S. launch, according to the magazine: Ubisoft’s Red Steel and Rayman Raving Rabbids, Sega’s Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and Square Enix’s Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors. The latter two are surprising inclusions for the launch line-up, since neither were playable at E3. Although the magazine seems adamant that Super Mario Galaxy will not be available until 2007, it is more ambiguous with regards to the release date of the Wii Sports titles – all shown prominently at E3 in what appeared to be near complete form. This suggests that the line-up of launch titles is not finalized, and could even include other traditional Nintendo launch games such as Wario Ware: Smooth Moves. Unofficial Japanese Nintendo magazines have previously suggested twenty titles for the Japanese launch, although they named only The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wii Sports, Dragon Quest Swords, Konami’s Elebits and Tecmo’s Super Swing Golf Pangya as specifics.