Double WiiWare surprise today

By Robert Purchese Published 4 July, 2008

But no Virtual Console games.

Nintendo has dished up two brand new WiiWare games, sticking to its Virtual Console one week and WiiWare the next rotation.

The first is Pokémon Ranch, "A place where Pokémon and people love living together," according to Hayley, the chirrupy gingham-shirt wearing vomit bowl of whimsy who introduces the game. Not my words, but those of Dan Whitehead, the man who will be offering the final say on these games as soon as he can.

Ranch is clearly an attempt to emulate the sort of success games such as Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon have enjoyed. The main idea is to import your animals from Pokémon Diamond or Pearl and then play with or take pictures of them in their misery. If you don't have the DS games then Ranch offers you a fresh monster to tinker with every real-time day. No levelling up, incidentally.

Pokémon Ranch costs 1000 Wii Points (approx GBP 7 / EUR 10).

The other game is Pop, where you pop bubbles. Point. Pop. Points. Rinse and repeat. Fun to begin with, but will it have any lasting appeal? Costs 700 Wii Points (approx GBP 5.50 / EUR 7).

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Darren #1 4 years ago

    WiiWare of the lack of internal storage space!!! ;)

  • DFawkes #2 4 years ago

    Pokemon game with no level grinding? I'm not sure about that one, but if it's a Animal Crossing/Harvest Moon type of game, I'm there :)

  • siro #3 4 years ago

    I spent quite a lot of time with POP already. I'd say it's my favorite offering of the Euro WiiWare so far.

  • statusjones #4 4 years ago

    (other than the price) what's the difference between wiiware pop and the pop! game that the shopto box is advertising - there is a difference right?

  • Agent_Llama #5 4 years ago

    the chirrupy gingham-shirt wearing vomit bowl of whimsy who introduces the game.

    :o)

    Been looking forward to Pokemon Ranch. Sounds interesting, it fully links up with the DS Pokemons - apparently Hayley will ask you to catch specific Pokemon in the DS game to bring back for her etc etc.

  • nick_f Verified Senior Producer, Microsoft #6 4 years ago

    I don't know why people are so snide about Pop - for a game about popping bubbles it has a surprising amount of depth.

    Hopefully the review will be a little fairer-minded.

  • siro #7 4 years ago

    statusjones: Judging from that pack shot, it must be a completely different game.

    Edit: Different developer, thus different game.
    Edited by 1 at 04/07/08 @ 10:10

  • JohnnyWashnGo #8 4 years ago

    Is it true that transferring your pokemon from the ds games to the ranch actually removes them from the ds game?

  • WinterSnowblind #9 4 years ago

    Yes, it acts as a storage device, as Diamond and Pearl themselves have little room for storing large amounts of Pokemon. It's really the only reason to get the game, unfortunately, unlike previous games you are unable to put them onto any Diamond and Pearl cart, except the one they were originally sent from. The Stadium and Box games were good for mass trading, but you can't do that here, making the whole thing almost worthless.

    The interactions between the Pokemon are just a small diversion that wear off after a few minutes, unless you're out of box space in Dimaond and Pearl, or badly want a Mew, avoid it, not at all worth the money.

  • aine #10 4 years ago

    yeah, Pop! (with exclamation mark) is an update of Taito's Pop'n Pop. it just isn't called Pop'n Pop cos they lost the license. Pop (no exclamation mark) is an original Wiiware game.

    edit: and the word "pop" has now lost all meaning to me
    Edited by 1 at 04/07/08 @ 14:11

  • djed #11 4 years ago

    pop

  • chanderzz #12 4 years ago

    What i dont get is, why cant they release wiiware and virtual console? They have 20+ years of games!