Wow...

Doh, sorry guys.

Ordered MySims Kingdom earlier today, may pick up Dissidia tomorrow or order it online. Importing Scribblenauts on the 15th. May get Contra some time this weekend.

The lack of VC game this week too is quite crappy, at the very least I like to see the lists of games growing even if the game was not for me.

whistles

Contra is a great game and all, but man...

contra rebirth got rated on the esrb site awhile back so expect this soon in the states

Oooh, I've actually been looking forward to the 6 in 1 translator, I hope it comes stateside soon.

One of our resident Otakus (we have those, right?) needs to test out the camera function with various Japanese text and let us know the results. Pronto!

Whaaaa?! Where's Monkey Island?!

What? No VC titles, We've been had!! back to this again....
Super Mario Kart before Christmas Please Nintendo.

Okay, I got it and played the first level. Its quite fun although I died way too easily on the boss. Love the return of the old music and sound effects.

Hey is that Roll from Megaman during the cut-scene at the beginning of stage two? With the blonde hair and red dress it looks just like her.

Still no LiT . Oh well, Contra is probably great, but I haven't played any of the other games in the serie. Will await reviews.

Blah!!! Nintendo of Europe is lame

wow, a somewhat disapointing week for europe, oh well, that translator app sounds interesting, especially if you have to translate something, contra rebirth also looks interesting, hope we´ll get it in north america soon

I would take one awesome game over the mounds of crap NA has thrown at it each week. Long live Contra!

Anyone else feel we'll be getting Contra this Monady for the "holiday gift?"

According to IGN Rebirth arrives on Monday for NA
http://wii.ign.com/articles/102/1021463p1.html

For the first time I am jealous of Europe. Cant wait to play contra!

Wahoo, Contra Rebirth on Monday! Sorry Europe, I guess Europe thought that Pilotwings and all the good games were too much good VC games, we al have to be punished....

Well, Contra is great, but the lack of VC is kinda sad.
If I had a DSi, I'd download that dictionary, you never know when you need to translate something from french, believe me, it has happened to me.

Sorry Europe. At least you got Contra.

However, 800pts is WAY too expensive for that app.

No Contra for Aussies apparently

contra rebirth makes the week great for you guys i been highly waiting since i first heard about it

Yeah, by the looks of it the Australia update is NULL

6 in 1 Dictionary has arrived!!! Congrats on getting these new apps first, guys! (E.g, City Maps and now this)

Surely they could have spread it out more evenly. In the two weeks before this we got Araknoid Plus, Bit Trip Core, Pilotwings, Mr Driller W and Texas Hold'em Poker on the Wii. This week we get nothing because for some reason Contra Rebirth wasn't suitable for an Australian Launch.

Surely they would have noticed that because of this Australia gets no Wii update this week. Maybe they could have pushed Pilotwings back a bit to fill in the gap. Wouldn't that have made more sense? Admittedly this has been a ridiculously good week for the Wii Shop despite that (Lost Winds Sequel and Bit Trip Void announced with trailers, Internet Channel update and becomes free) but would it have been that hard to have something for AU to download at all this week?

And while I am at it.... advertise the updates to the Wii Shop channel a bit more. Put a banner across the channel like with the Nintendo Channel saying "A Monkey Island Game just came out" and I can pretty much guarantee the sales will go through the roof.

nintendo`s download policy sucks. where are the VC games this week?

I can't believe this! PAL territories outside Europe must be the most neglected when it comes to Nintendo! I mean, Europe gets a good amount of games in the Wii and DSi Shops that never even see the light of day in Australia or New Zealand; not the least of which is every single Virtual C64 title in the Wii Shop! I hear people complaining about the (lack of) depth in Bit Boy! WHY CAN'T I FIND OUT FOR MYSELF? Every update for at least the last month or so has seen at least one title not being released in the Oceanic shops! We didn't get a single release in the Wii Shop today! Unbelievable!

Europe complains that it gets less games than NTSC territories...well I can say now that you guys have it easy! The only thing stopping me from switching to the Europe Wii Shop is the 70+ titles in my collection! Please, have pity Nintendo

BTW: I hope we see SMK next week! Anybody else looking forward to it?

I can't wait for Super Mario Kart.

Anyway, I don't care too much for download this month as retail is eating my wallet this month with The Beatles and Scribblenauts.

Contra would've been nice though....

Just for you Aussies, I lived in Australia for 2 years 03-05, often a game that was available in English (in America) would come out in Australia far before Europe on XBox, because it didn't need to be translated into over 9000 different languages, which was a really good thing. I don't know why the UK is still seen as too small a market to make a region of UK, Australia and NZ and keep mainland Europe seperate. However, I noticed that Australian salaries were generally 2/3-3/4 of UK salaries for the same job due to lower cost of living at the time, yet games cost the equivalent of the higher UK price point and always stuck at a set conversion rate i.e. 2.5xUK. $100 (£40) for a new console game, $80 (£32) for a new GBA/DS game. Really ridiculous, so I feel your pain and it was no surprise to me that the de facto standard in Australia among people I knew tended to be to pirate games. This is also another reason why I got a US console, more often than not (except in Nintendo's online case it seems!), you get what you want in English first and if the exchange rate is favourable it's often cheaper.

Only two titles, and one is shovelware. Well, we had worse weeks

Contra is cool though, a bit difficult (that's how we like it), can be played with NGC controller (yeah), and lacks real widescreen support.

Not for the last time I'm truly disappointed with this update: No VC and one over-priced retro game. Where the hell's all the "good" games that supposedly resulting in the restricted VC releases?

Thankfully I'm playing through Wonder Boy in Monster World. I'll tackle Alien Wars later for my Contra fix and save 200 points in the process.

Questions (also posted on the forums):
How hard is Contra on the easy mode? Will it still be stress-inducingly difficult?
Does it make use of the Contra/Konami code?
Does the dictionary have actual definitions or is it a translator?
Does the dictionary have some kind of thesaurus feature to show synonyms (ie, words with similar meanings)?
Is the dictionary just a languages dictionary, or is there any bonus functionality to teach you some grammar skills etc for other languages?

If there's yesses to these questions, I'll get 'em.

Because of Japanese '6 in 1 Dictionary with Camera Function' sounds very interesting.

I quite enjoyed it. Maybe because I was playing on easy but the best weapons (spread and homing) are commonplace. I love the return of the old music and sound effects, also stage 2 is based on the first stage of Contra 3. Although maybe its not quite as epic - there's no "now that was cool" scenes like there are in Contra 3. Also, the stages seem quite short. I only turned it off during the third stage because it was getting late. I was surprised at how easy it was on easy. I was expecting it to be much harder like the earlier games. Keep special weapons after getting hit, infinite continues, and starting just before the boss stage after you do continue, no wonder I was able to breeze through it so easily. I was just playing to see what was like so although I kept dying, I just kept continuing.

@Chibi Link - Yeah I do but good luck to me if they ever respond but I can pretty much answer your questions anyway with out them.

ColorZ didn't get a release because the developers didn't opt to release it here, not idea why it got classified thought. They have to follow the NOE system because that's the way it's setup, things can be click on and off for Australia but basically we just get stuff the same time as Europe because we're still considered PAL by NCL (and yeah I know it doesn't matter for DLC, who knows). I suppose they could release stuff whenever they wanted but obviously don't want to.

Best bet is to change your store to the UK when you have spent all your points as you'll lose em.

Poor update. One wiiware game and we have so much catching up to do.

Anyway, enjoy contra whoever downlaods it. #sigh#.

@Chibi Link: I think the games should remain attached to your account. I changed my Country once to UK, so I could download the english version of Actraiser and then changed back to Germany and everything remained downloadable.

But why is Monkey Island not made available? What the...!!! I think this was it for the monthly release schedule of that series, at least in Europe...

With country swapping to and from Australia results in the Wii Points balance being wiped to zero (and the Wii Points won't come back ) for some reason.

As for buying points. In theory if the credit card works for the Australian Wii Shop it should also work for the UK Wii Shop. All I can say is I never had any problems using my debit card on the Japanese Wii Shop.

How hard is Contra on the easy mode? Will it still be stress-inducingly difficult?

I'm playing it on medium, it's decently hard, not as much as Contra 4 though and overall feels more fair, it's easier to get used to the game and master a part to progress but of course it won't just roll over and hand you victory on a silver platter (though you can set the starting lives up to 7 so maybe the option is there). Continues set you back to the last checkpoint so it's not a Metal Slug-style infinite credit cakewalk either. I think the game shouldn't be easier otherwise it'd lose the whole point of mastering areas to survive them and just become a colorful firework.

Does it make use of the Contra/Konami code?

Haven't found a use for it yet but who knows, may just need to be entered in another place.

When you use your card on the Japanese Wii Shop, do you pay in Japanese Yen? Does your bank simply convert it from Pounds to Yen for you for a small fee or something?
It did charge in Japanese Yen (and Japanese tax rates). As for currency conversion, my bank used to do it for free but has since charged a 3% fee for it. You need to read up about it.

The world would be so much better without Wiiware.

Two weeks without VC games and bitching is kept at a bare minimum compared to the time it happened in the U.S.

@ Bass X0
Maybe thats because we have all the great games now?

@ Chibi and other Australians upset at not having contra.

Just change your region to the UK, your games won't dissapear, however any wiipoints you have when you change WILL, Permanently.

If you don't have any points sitting there doing nothing on your account though then there is no problem.
Change your region to the UK, purchase 1000 points, buy Contra then change back. The pricing of Contra is actually perfect for region swapping as provided you don't have spare points lying arond you lose nothing and gain a game!

First we US gamer got two weeks of no VC then the Supe Star Wars Trilogy were announced, and in between comes The Revenge of Shinobi and Phantasy Star. Japan's VC hadn't come to a halt yet and they already got Super Mario Kart, Earthworm Jim 2 and a few other classics (including some of those VC Arcade games from Sega and Namco). NOA and NOE really need to act up and started giving 2 VC per week again, we need all those VC games from Japan here too.

Whooa! Contra Rebirth! I haven´t bought anything for Wii for months, but boy will that change now! It´s got to be awesome! Pity about the Probotectors, but I never expected to see them anyway.

Reading the comments I think some people just don't realise just what a Legendary franchise Contra is.

Contra is great, but WOW. That's a real kick in the crotch... sorry Europeans.