Hello again, digesters, and welcome to another edition of the Weekly Digest-slightly late this week, but do forgive me.

I'll start this week with a correction- I said last week that Nintendo's conversion of the SNES classic Donkey Kong Country onto the GBA was shockingly bad, and seemed like an attempt to sully Rare's good name. It has come to light this week that it was Rare, not the Big N, who did the conversion. So, apologies to Nintendo for apportioning the blame to them. NOM, put your hands up!

Speaking of NOM, the magazine relaunched in Britain lately under the slightly different name Nintendo Official Magazine UK- and guess what, Cube-Europe are all over it (sort of) . Our staffer Franklin takes the NOM quiz, while a special 'thank you' note to the forum users at C-E gets a mention in there, too. You know we've really hit the big time when, er, NOM mentions us. Yes.

Nintendo confirmed this week that the new Donkey Kong game for the GameCube won't be a 3D platformer, as expected, in the mould of Rare's excellent DK64. Rather, the new game, to be developed by Namco, will be a major departure for the series. Donkey Konga, as it is to be called, is a rhythm game in the vein of Samba De Amigo- the popular music title developed by Sega for the Dreamcast which sees the player using Maracas to participate in the game. Donkey Konga will come with a Conga drum peripheral- used to play the game. The man himself, Shigeru Miyamoto is a self-confessed fan of the Sega game, which is the blatant inspiration for the new title. Namco, unlike the big N, have experience in developing music-based titles such as this one, so we assume DK (and the gang?) are in good hand. Still can't imagine DK dancing in any shape or form, though�.
The game is due to hit Japanese shelves during the Christmas period meaning the title should hit Europe sometime in 2004. We'll keep you posted.

Contrary to their own press releases, Nintendo of America are about to lower the price of the GameCube in the U.S to a stunning $99. That's a 33% drop- quite drastic, and great news for consumers, obviously. The price drop will be effective from the end of September. No news yet whether a similar drop will come into affect in Europe. No suprises there. With any luck this will boost the Cube's flagging U.S sales.

By Christmas, all GBA games are to be packaged in DVD-style cases throughout America and Europe. About time, too- those flimsy cardboard boxes have stayed amost the same since the days of the original mono Game Boy. This is to coincide with a price drop of some kind for GBA games- even better news, given the stratospherically high price of many GBA games. Heck, many GBA games exceed the price of Cube games. Unbelievable.

In other news, The poor Cubie has had it hard during the recent heatwave in Britain. Sales for the GC fell below 1,000 for the first time since the consoles launch. Ouch. Microsoft's tub of plastic fell to 4,000 units. Lets not dwell on it, shall we?

And now, the news everybody's been waiting for. Nintendo have announced, to a captive U.S audience, that Mario (surname Mario) will sadly not be contesting the upcoming California recall election. Hopes were high that Mario would throw his winged cap in to the ring for the job- unfortunately, this is not the case. All is not lost, however- in Nintendo's own words�

"Instead, he [Mario] disclosed plans to focus on furthering the development of the Mario Party, a well-established, alternative grassroots movement for people who want to see real action from their candidates."

Mario went on to explain his decision not to take part- "The California recall election is too much of a circus, even for me, and I live in a world filled with Koopa Troopas and man-eating plants. Multi-player is good -- but this election is over the top," says Mario. "I definitely would have been the most animated candidate but, even in times of deep budget deficits, saving princesses has to take priority."

But here's the biggie:

"However, Mario remains guarded about rumors of a Presidential bid in 2004. I've spent my life collecting coins, leaping over obstacles and fighting bosses, so obviously I have the necessary experience," says Mario. "But as all game players know, everything else must be put on hold until the limitless fun of Mario Party 5 is explored. Once that's done, I will make a decision."

Oh, Nintendo. We do love you , really we do, but� words fail me. Anyone remember the MP3 player press release Ninty made a few years back.

Nintendo this week showed their generous side-

With the help of the Starlight Children's Foundation Nintendo of America is to introduce GameCubes into some American hospitals to help ease the suffering of hospitalized children.

They will be introduced in selected hospitals throughout Washington state such as Swedish Medical center in Seattle, Deaconess Medical center, Ronald McDonald House and the Sacred Heart Children's Hospital in Spokane, Kennewick General Hospital, and Kirkland's Evergreen Hospital.

The Nintendo 'Fun Centers' will feature GameCubes, Nintendo games, Sharp televisions and DVD players. They will help make hospital stays more enjoyable. These Fun Centers were first introduced in 1991 where they were equipped with Super Nintendos. In 1998 they were upgraded to the N64 and to celebrate the partnership Nintendo is to give the Starlight Children's Foundation over �3 million to help build more Fun Centers.

Ahh, good on you Ninty- always the philanthropists, eh?

2 cancellations for you, next. Vivendi have kindly canned the GameCube version of the very well received Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter, which got rave reviews in the PS2 and Xbox press. Vivendi, aka the cost-cutting corporation, really have fallen from grace of late, haven't they? Well, we'll miss this one for sure. The Capcom 5 became the Capcom 4 this week, with the news that Dead Phoenix, the fast-paced shoot-'em up has been cancelled for good. This won't come as too much as a blow to most- it was the least-promising of all the Capcom games, by a long shot. Still, points to further problems at the Japanese giant after a spate of cancellations a while back.

You may recall last week I gave the Lazarus award to Rare, for resurrecting development on the GBA Banjo-Kazooie game. Well Toby Gard (remember him?) of Confounding Factor, has been talking to British games magazine CVG. He told them that Galleon, has extricated itself from development hell. The company said that it is still in the process of developing the title and that it is aiming to release the game Q4 this year.

"The Xbox version will be coming first, then GameCube, and probably a PS2 version coming later next year as well, but we can't say for definite because the translations are out of our hands," said Toby Gard, creator of Galleon. He continued saying: "It's nearly ready. You can play it and everything, and it's good. It's basically there. We had a big hold up at the beginning of the year because people needed to see a higher frame rate than we'd achieved; that was a big technical challenge requiring a large rewrite. So now we've got the frame rate sorted out, we're just putting on the polish."

We say best of luck to him- and well done for sticking up for good old-fashioned production values, by waiting until the game was actually finished (an alien concept to far too may of todays profit-obsessed companies). Lets hope Galleon delivers. Watch this space. For a little while more.
Well, we'll leave it there. See you on Sunday evening! Emails, queries, corrections, complaints, and everything else to the usual address below.

Sl�n go f�ill,
Mark Cullinane
[email protected]