It appears that not only is April 27th the launch date for Mario Kart Wii… but a whole channel devoted to Mario Kart.

DailyGame.net had some details of the new channel, see for yourself below…

The Mario Kart Wii Channel will let players compete in tournaments, check worldwide rankings, see when their friends are playing and download ghost data.

The new Mario Kart Wii Channel is suppose to help enhance gameplay… and I’m quite sure that it will.

(Via DailyGame.net)

Nintendo hates Pirates. Okay, not actual Pirates… I’m speaking of Piracy, you know music/movie/software/game piracy.

Nintendo has made it well known that some consoles will have problems playing the new dual layer SSBB game, because of a dirty lenses. But, what they fail to mention is that the game won’t also play for anyone who has installed a “mod chip” in their Wii.

According to dBTechno…

those who have mod chips in their Nintendo Wii consoles are not able to load up Super Smash Bros. Brawl, as the game will simply not load.

An interesting thing to note though, is that people who were able to download and burn a copy of the game on a black dual-laver DVD, were able to load up the game fine.

So maybe Nintendo’s attempt to help thwart piracy wasn’t a total success… but expect their tactics to get much much harder to work around.

My $.02 - SSBB is is one of the few games in a very long time that I see being worth the sticker price… and one of the few games on the Wii that is actually fun, so do yourself, and Nintendo, a favor - go out and by this title (if you can find one).

The North American debut for WiiWare titles is going to be in May, but we’ve finally got some details about how the pricing structure is going to work.

For the uninitiated, Wii Ware will be different from your run of the mill Virtual Console titles — all the games will be originally developed download titles for what’s been hyped as bargain prices.

And the numbers from Gamasutra look promising. The Nintendo Wii feature just launched in Japan, and the cheapest WiiWare title is $5 and the most costly is $15.

While there’s no indication that the North American structure will be the same, it’s a good bet that it’ll be pretty close.

Angels Solitaire is the cheapest title of the lot at 500 Points. Square Enix’s Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: My Life as King is the heftiest at 1,500 Points. But hey, it’s a Final Fantasy title.

We’ve been looking forward to We Love Golf ever since the Wii title was announced, but the fact that the Japanese version of We Love Golf doesn’t support Wi-Fi has been a bit of a letdown.

After all, we expected it would be the same for North America…how wrong we were.

“The major content newly added is the online gameplay,” Camelot told Nintendo Power in the latest issue, as transcribed by NeoGAF.

NP went on the say that the newly added feature is the most fun of all!

“Among the modes, we think that the new online mode is the most fun! Now you can play with a friend in you neighborhood as well as anyone in the world,” raved NP.

“When you beat another player, their character’s face is added to your play sheet, so players will want to collect as many as possible.”

There are few things more disappointing than finding a copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, popping it into your Wii, and finding that you get a read error.

Have no fear — you’re not alone. The same errors occurred in Japan to some unlucky gamers and it’s due to the fact that SSBB is the first game to take advantage of the Wii’s dual layer lens.

The previously unused lens is more sensitive to dirty, grime, smoke, and other assorted filth. But Nintendo is already aware of the problem and will fix it free of charge for the small percentage of people it affects. Not only that, but the company will pay for the shipping both ways as well.

You can’t beat that kind of customer service with a stick. The only downside is, of course, that you won’t have a Wii in the meantime. For those afflicted gamers…time to spend more quality time with the DS.

There are a million different games that we could have thought of for Wii, but to be honest, we didn’t see this one coming from a mile away.

Major League Eating: The Game. We’re dead serious.

It’s an upcoming WiiWare title revolving around competitive eating whose price has yet to be announced.

The bizarre title will use the Nintendo Wii remote to eat in a smorgasbord of styles which include the cram, toss, and ‘typewriter.’

We feel so out of the loop.

“Watching Major League Eating is like watching poetry in motion,” says Bill Swartz, Head Woof at Mastiff. “Professional gurgitators have the grace of ballerinas yet the brute strength, mental focus, and intestinal fortitude to push their bodies and minds as hard as athletes in any other extreme endurance sport. Victory is sweet and defeat can be well, really, really messy. It’s an experience we’re proud to help bring into the home.”

While Nintendo may have invented one of the most graceful products of the modern era in the Wiimote, such only makes it all the more tempting for third party manufacturers (as well as Nintendo its freaking self) to spoil the fun with extrapolation. Take the Wiimax, it turns your Wiimote into a coveted plastic machine gun or rifle—but it doesn’t stop there, my friends.

WiiMax takes superfluousness of design one step further, adding a laser sight. While some may believe the laser is for aiming, the wiser among us realize that the Wiimax’s designer, forced to take such a lousy position, added the laser in hopes that a mirror would one day refract the beam into a user’s eyes, burning the retina like a sizzling egg and preventing any more enjoyment/bastardization of the Wiimote.

Seriously, these peripherals are the equivalent to putting a sweater on a cat. The cat may look stupid, but you’re the one who looks like a douchebag. Please stop. [product via technabob]

This foot-tall Mario statue is actually a DS holder, with his grip specially designed to hold your portable gaming device. It’s the perfect way to make your bedroom look like a 1993 Toys R Us while also making sure your DS doesn’t have to sully itself resting on any flat surfaces. How can you say no? [Product Page via 7 Gadgets]

Despite the fact that consoles have become the primary platform for most gamers, there is still a die-hard fanbase that prefer PCs based on factors like the online experience you get with games like WOW, the level of control that a keyboard and mouse can bring, as well as the potential for better performance. So the question is, where do your loyalties lie?

Nintendo, the current third-place for online console gaming features, just announced Wii Pay & Play. What this means exactly is still fairly vague, but Nintendo says they will collect “fees for some services [that] will allow us to adapt flexibly.” To us this says that they’ll start charging for some online content or functionality (either for downloads or for the privilege of playing certain games online) in order to provide an even richer (read: not that lousy friend code garbage) functionality for the user. More details will surface when Pay & Play gets closer to launch. [Kotaku]