The director of Super Mario 3D Land, Yoshiaki Koizumi, is apparently buzzing with ideas for the Nintendo Wii U. While speaking to Official Nintendo Magazine he explained that he actually has “too many” ideas for a Mario game on the console.

“As it turns out, I have too many ideas at the moment for Mario games on Wii U,” said Koizumi. “I’m going to have to start narrowing them down and thinking about which ideas might work well together so that the whole system will be an enjoyable experience rather than a hodgepodge of ideas.”

It will be interesting to see if it will be anything like the Super Mario Mii tech demo or be something entirely different.

What would you like to see in a Wii U Mario?

During an earnings briefing on Friday, Nintendo CEO, Satoru Iwata shared plans to introduce paid item transactions on the Wii U and the 3DS. This would allow players to purchase extra content for their games, new courses, new characters etc.

Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto both expressed interest in extending the life of their games through downloadable content. However, they will be selective about how they implement it. Iwata noted that low quality DLC like unlocking keys or stat increases would likely increase short term profits but might not be beneficial in the long run as it does not allow Nintendo to build long term relationships with the customer.

Even though Nintendo might not implement low quality DLC this doesn’t mean that third party companies won’t.

Iwata also addressed the idea of free-to-play games where you are charged for item purchases. He feels that this type of content would damage the premium value of Nintendo’s content.

Paid item transaction will be available for the 3DS later this year and the Wii U when it comes out.

So, are you happy that Nintendo are implementing DLC in the Wii U? New vehicles in Mario Kart? Yes please.

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) are interested in developing for the Wii U. Executive producer of BBC Digital and Games, Simon Harris explained that they were looking into possibly bringing content to the platform.

“I think the challenge is for us to get [our brands as] games into something like retail, [We’re] very excited to hear what their plans are in that area and yes we’ll be looking at whether there are really good strategic partnerships on our brands that we can bring to those platforms as well. Nintendo are currently a market leader on consoles so when they do something new you’d better sit up and take notice and try to see if we can become involved in it.”

The Japanese gaming magazine, Famitsu has polled its readers to find out their opinions on the Wii U. When asked what game series they most wanted to come to the system, Zelda came out tops with Super Mario Bros coming in second.

They were then asked which of the announced games were they most interested in, with Smash Bros coming in first and Pikmin 3 coming in at a respectable second.

Full results below:

What announced game interests you?
Total 1,190 votes
Smash Bros. (560 votes), Pikmin (330 votes), Assassin’s Creed (80 votes), Tekken (70 votes), Ghost Recon (50 votes).

What series do you want to see released on Wii U?
1,130 votes, multiple responses
Zelda (210 votes), Super Mario Bros. (100 votes), Dragon Quest (80 votes), Mario Kart (50 votes), Monster Hunter (50 votes)

As promised THQ have released the second part of the Metro Last Light footage that was shown at E3. This is the third video following from the prologue and part one. Though it’s not Wii U footage you can still get an idea of what the game will be like when it releases for Wii U sometimes next year. Enjoy.

Carry on reading for screenshots

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EA have been quite vocal about their support of Nintendo’s next home console but their faith in the Wii U has been increased even further now that they have received the new dev kits. Vice president of EA Sports, Andrew Wilson told the gaming website Eurogamer that they can do “anything” on the Wii U that they can do on the PS3 or 360.

“The short answer is yes [we have a better idea of Wii U’s power]; the longer answer is not quite,” said Wilson. “As every new piece of hardware and every new development library comes through we get a greater understanding of the power. With our early research we had been very happy with the output of the box and we expect that that will only go up moving forward.”

“There are added challenges for us as developers when you think about rendering on two screens and what that might mean, but we’re looking forward to that challenge. It’s still moving,” he added, “but I think we’ll be able to do anything that we can do on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on the Wii U.”

Darksiders II, one of the first games confirmed to be making its way to the Wii U at launch will not have multiplayer features due to technical difficulties. Vigil Games had been considering multiplayer for Darksiders II but technical hurdles got in the way.

“You almost have to make four games. You’ve got completely different animation sets. It’s 800 to 1,000 animations for Death alone and they’re all unique. One thing great about working with Joe [Madureira] is that he comes up with awesome characters but they have completely different proportions, so you can’t share any of the animations across them. Of course there’s balancing with the different abilities. We’re going to want them to play differently, so we wanted to spend some time developing each of the characters individually.”

When asked whether multiplayer could be a possibility in a future Darksiders title Marvin Donald of Vigil said:

“It’s too soon to say. Multiplayer is definitely something we want, but this time around we’re not quite ready for it,”

The creators of Doodle Jump the successful mobile title have told the gaming website This Is Wii U that they would love to bring the series to the Wii U. They did point out that they had no immediate plans to bring the series to the console but they do seem positive about the possibility of it.

When asked what his thoughts were on Doodle Jump on the Wii U, Ivor Pušenjak, creator of the series said:

“No immediate plans, but we’d love to.”

This title would be a welcome addition to the Wii U’s digital download service when it launches.

Thanks to Calum for the tip.

An epic amount of trademarks that Nintendo reserved in the run up to the Wii U reveal at E3 has recently been released. A lot of the trademarks probably won’t evolve into physical games and are just a protective measure but there is a possibility that future Wii U games are embedded in this list. The collection of trademarks includes Mii U, Wii Play U and Wii U Sports. Carry on reading for the full list.

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Yes, according to a recent tweet by Team Meat about a new game that they have in the works. Not much is known about the game but Team Meat tweeted that they are “deving it for wii U”. They have also released a video teasing that the new game is hidden in it. As far as I can see the game will be about repeatedly stabbing boxes, cats, and mini trolls. You can have a go at working it out below.

I hope that this mysterious game does make its way to the Wii U seeing as Super Meat Boy was cancelled for WiiWare last year and plans to port it to the 3DS were also ditched.