I've always been a bit baffled as to the reason why Nintendo (until the recent Wii controller) always seems so keen on situating the B and A buttons in a bottom-left to upper-right fashion, instead of adhering to the player's thumb.

- Zizz

I guess Nintendo's thinking is that most people will only want to hit one button at a time. If A and B were aligned so they were both under someone's thumb, people may accidentally hit the lower button when lunging for the top one. It follows that since A is on the right and B is on the left, the four-button diamond layout of the SNES and DS use the same pattern. It would be more baffling if the A and B Buttons were in different spots on different Nintendo hardware, I suppose.

It wont be long before my question will be answered, but I thought I'd ask any. I've been hearing from gamestop for like a month now repeatedly that RE4 will have online co-op for the campaign mode. Now this really isn't a deciding factor. For what ever reason I just kinda ignored RE4 even though I have GCN and PS2, so I never got it and the Wii edition compels me since it's so cheap and it's got the best of both of the older versions. But if this co-op stuff is true then thats one hell of a bonus to me. So yeah, do you guys know if it's true?

- Ritchie
Kentucky

It ain't.

Hey,

I know that American games will not work on PAL Wii hardware, but will American Wiimotes work on PAL Wiis?

- Arvind
Durham, NC

Controllers aren't subject to region lock-outs. You can use any controllers with any Wii console anywhere in the world, just like you can with any game system out there.

Hey bag,

I'm a longtime reader, first time writer. Anyhow, I was wondering if Nintendo or 3rd parties might release titles for the DS that make use of the RAM pak included with the Nintendo DS Browser. It seems like it would be a possibility since Nintendo did this before with the N64 Expansion Pak. What do you think?

Also, I remember some time ago an announcement was made that SNK was making a King of Fighters DS game. Do you know what ever became of that? I ask because the DS, with its four face buttons, would be excellent for Neo-Geo style games, especially fighters.

- Clinton Y.
Memphis, TN

Using the DS Browser as a kind of DS expansion pak is unlikely. Asking, or even requiring, consumers to purchase an accessory branded as an Internet browser to play a theoretical expansion pak DS game would confuse them to the point where they may second-guess the feature set of the DS itself. (Why do people need to get an Internet browser to play a DS game when the DS already plays games online without it?) It would be a poor move decision by Nintendo if it was to try to make that work, in my opinion.

I don't rule out the possibility of there being a DS expansion pak, though. I'm sure developers could do great things with extra memory, and the GBA slot is a possible avenue to give them that. If Nintendo was going to do it such an addition would need to be clearly labeled and marketed as an expansion pack add-on, as would the games that support it. Nintendo doesn't want to get people thinking that all games would automatically be better because of the extra memory, which of course they wouldn't be.

And what about King of Fighters? It was talked about in April of last year, and not heard from since. I don't think anyone outside of SNK knows what the deal is, to be honest.

Hey guys,

I was just looking around on the EA Sports site when I saw that (in addition to 360 and PS3) NCAA 08 is coming to both the PS2 and XBOX while Nascar 08 is coming to the PS2. Why in the world aren't these games coming to Wii? Even though the Wii has seen so many crappy ports, I don't think I would mind if they simply ported these games over to Wii...even if they didn't give them the "Madden" treatment. Have you all heard anything in regards to either of these games coming to Wii?

- Jonathan

I think EA will eventually bring NCAA Football to the Wii, but releasing it this year, or even next year, may not be such a good idea. The Wii audience is still relatively small at this point—around three million in the United States—so releasing two football games to a limited audience may cannibalize the sales of both. I don't think it's in EA's best interest to do a quick port, because it knows that releasing a crap port will not draw good sales. Just look at Ubisoft.

NASCAR is another matter. That's a big license that would be a big draw toward the steering controls of the Wii remote. Outside of Excite Truck and maybe Cars, there's not much to see in the racing game category for the system. Unless EA announces that it's going to release a NASCAR Wii game at E3 next month, it could be missing out on a good opportunity.

EA will bring all its major sports titles to the Wii in due time. Don't expect to see the bulk of them until the system gets near the 10 million mark in the States, though.

This might've already been answered in a previous mailbag, but here goes anyway...

Remember the days of PGC when you guys left comments on news items? I always found it amusing to see what the PGC staff thought of press releases and such -- it gave something amusing to read to offset the dull PR.

Anyway, why'd you stop doing that?

- MJ
Texas

The staff still leaves comments in Talkback, in which a feedback forum thread for everything we post on the site is located. (If you want to leave feedback on NWR articles, you'll need to register for our forums!) We stopped doing it on the same page as a story because we felt it wasn't professional to mix factual news with staff opinion on the main site, or worse, have a reader misinterpret our opinion as fact. While you might think that's unlikely to happen, remember that some people will believe anything they see on the Internet. April Fools' Day claims a lot of victims, after all.

Hey all -- love the web site and mailbag. Dunno whether this has been asked before, but here goes: Any chance Nintendo will eventually make the Weather Channel a real-time kind of thing? Getting weather information that's six hours old is pretty pointless, especially when you can see live radar images on TV and the Internet. Thanks!

- dont have one
Tallahassee

Probably not. Getting more frequent updates from the service Nintendo is using will probably cost it more than it's currently paying to get the weather data it gets now. Real-time weather would be nice, but Nintendo named it the Forecast Channel for a reason. Its primary function is to forecast the weather, not keep you informed of its current state. Can't you just go outside to do that?

I have three questions for you

First, I don't know if this question has been addressed before, however, since the Virtual Console is taking off well, do you think Nintendo could or would release a GameBoy VC for the DS. It could have a 64 Mb memory card or whatever size that goes in the bottom much like the DS Web Browser to store all the games you download.

Second, do you think we will see any Wii games that can network with other Wii consoles much like you could with mario kart on gamecube? With all Wii's having wireless lan cards, it seems like the possibility of having Ad-Hoc networking with other Wii's would be possible.

Finally, I love my Wii, however I still love a lot of my GameCube Games. The problem is I love rumble and can't live without it. Don't you think it's time for nintendo to release an updated Wavebird with rumble, after all there are Wii games that support Cube controllers, so they are not completely dead.

- NeoThunder
Topeka, KS

1. If Nintendo were to Virtual-Console-ify the DS, it won't be via a large memory card. Releasing such a device would be like telling the pirate and black market community to enjoy all the free games Nintendo would be giving them. Instead, old handheld games on the DS would probably only work if the Wii was used as the in-between. See the last page of our Making the Jump special for our hypothetical take on how it could work.

2. Yes. Nintendo specifically mentioned that Wii systems were capable of communicating with each other in the same way as the DS. In fact, it has hinted at the possibility of Wii games having download play capability, also like the DS. I expect developers may start implementing things like LAN play soon, especially games that are online capable.

3. Nintendo is never going to release any new or updated GameCube accessories. It's a dead system, folks. The fact that GameCube accessories can work on the Wii doesn't mean Nintendo will roll out new GameCube accessories. What you've got is all you're going to get on the GameCube unless you try a third-party controller option.