Two Tribes have been hard at work on Toki Tori 2, and it’s one of the Wii U games we’ve been hearing the most news recently. In an interview at GDC, they were asked if they had any specific plans for the Wii U version of the game in addition to the level editor we heard about earlier.

There are a lot of things we can do with a controller like that. We’ve been thinking of using the camera to measure light intensity and translate that into the game, or perhaps having a Tokidex for all the creatures in the game.

They aim to have Toki Tori 2 ready in time for the Wii U’s launch and are developing it for several platforms all at once. But it’s very pleasing to hear that they want to give the Wii U version of the game a little something extra.

Michel Ancel, the creator of Rayman, was asked to share his opinion on the Wii U in a recent interview with the publication Glitch. In particular, he seems to be a big fan of the controller’s near-field communication technology and touchscreen.

I’m excited about the Wii U! They have some great new features with touchpad and the NFC capabilities that can be very interesting for gameplay – for example, the combination of using the pad and the controllers at the same time. I think E3 will be a good opportunity to see how it all comes together.

Ancel’s last project was the critically acclaimed (and commercially undersold) Rayman Origins. It sounds like he has something awesome up his sleeve for the Wii U, so let’s hope we hear more from him soon!

Tecmo Koei and Team Ninja have given us three more videos of Ninja Gaiden 3, one of which is a TV commercial. All three of them are in Japanese, so unless you speak the ninja tongue, you won’t understand much more dialogue than I did. But there’s still lots of bloody sword action to behold.

You can watch all three videos after the break.

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JB Hi-Fi, an Australian electronic retailer, has started taking in-store pre-orders for the Wii U. It’s so early, it doesn’t even have a price tag yet. But if you live down under in the land of koalas and kangaroos, and are paranoid that Wii U stock will sell out before you get a chance to buy one, you now have a pre-order option.

Team Ninja have released yet another piece of Ninja Gaiden 3 media. This time, it’s a ten-minute gameplay video of the game’s London stage. You can watch it after the break.

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Koichi Hayashida, the director of Super Mario 3D Land, spoke about the development of the game at GDC 2012. But although most of the interview was about Mario’s stereoscopic outing, Hayashida was also more than happy to share what he looks forward to the most in the Wii U as a developer:

I certainly think it’s interesting hardware with many possibilities. If I had to share just one idea from my own personal experience, it would involve when my family is watching TV together. If I want to play games on the Wii I can’t, but if I had a Wii U I could use that smaller display to play a game while they watch TV. That’d be really good for someone with a family like me.

I live in a household with one TV, and it truly can get aggravating when my sister and I both want to watch something or play some video games at the same time. It’s one of the features they’ve been touting since the Wii U’s debut last E3, and I personally look forward to it as well.

Today’s most interesting Wii U rumour is that Nintendo have tweaked the console’s specs to make it capable of running Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4, which will likely see increasing use by developers in the coming years.

The rumour originates from NeoGAF user BlackNMild2k1, who claims that the information comes from a friend of a friend who works for an unnamed multiplatform developer. The footing of the rumour is a more than a little shaky, but true facts have sprung out of NeoGAF in this fashion before and it’s plausible to think that Nintendo wouldn’t want to miss out on Unreal Engine 4.

Unreal Engine 3 is widely used in many current games for the ease with which it allows developers to produce advanced games with complex graphical effects. If you’ve played any of the Mass Effect or Gears of War games, then you’ve already seen the engine in action. As developers move on to Unreal Engine 4, however, it’s likely that many of them would not be willing to go to the extra trouble to port a game backwards to version 3 just so the Wii U can get it as well.

What would this mean for you as a gamer? More third-party support, and a more powerful console (and judging by some of the press and gaming forums out there, you can never cram enough power into a Nintendo console). The rumour sounds completely plausible and a bump in specs would make the Wii U more attractive to gamers and developers alike.

I, for one, hope it’s true.

If Toki Tori 2 wasn’t confirmed for the Wii U before, it is “definitely” confirmed for the platform now, in the words of Two Tribes’s creative director Collin van Ginkel.

And while the launch date of the Wii U itself is still unknown to the public, Two Tribes are telling us Toki Tori 2 will either be there for it or come “really quickly” afterwards.

[We’re] pretty sure that it’s going to happen really quickly after launch. Maybe at launch but we don’t know, depends on Nintendo plans.

– Martijn Reuvers, Managing Director for Two Tribes

The original Toki Tori was quite well received by critics, so having a well-crafted sequel right out of the gate can only help the Wii U gain traction, especially since Nintendo have a lot to prove with the console’s digital distribution mechanisms.

Two Tribes have released a short teaser trailer as well as a few high-quality screenshots of Toki Tori 2, following up on the GDC gameplay demo from the other day.

You can watch the trailer and check out the screenshots after the break.

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Austrian publication derStandard.at learned at GDC that Medal of Honor: Warfighter is coming to the Wii U. I don’t think this should come as too great a surprise, knowing that the Wii U is specifically designed to make ports from the Xbox 360 very easy, but it’s great to have confirmation.

The news was accompanied by a release date of October 23rd, though it is unclear whether this date also applies to the Wii U version or not. The wording of the original article makes it sound like it does; but at this point, I’m not sure if even Nintendo have a firm date for the console’s launch yet.

There’s a trailer for the game as well, which you can watch right after the break.

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