Nintendo Australia is sending word that it will be holding a beginner class this Thursday for DS owners in their region. The class will teach visitors about the basics of handling titles like Animal Crossing, and Nintendogs. Further details are available in the full article.

Some ace attorney may have found a new game to sue, as a Scottish girl claims Nintendo's Animal Crossing swore at her. The 11 year old school girl Khloe Leslie was shocked when the game called her a "f***ing cow."

As most of us know, Animal Crossing is not a mature game about monsters or humans with animalistic nature. Leeanne, 28, the girl's mom, banned her from the game that she thought was for kids.

Nintendo UK's spokesman said "it is either a pirate copy or it is user-inputted text". Swearing on a game rated 'E', huh? How likely was that?

(Sorry for the mini-censor bar in the pic! We have to keep the blogs clean of *udder* cursing. LOL!)

Nintendo of Australia has announced that new downloadable demo games for the Nintendo DS have finally gone live at Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection hotspots all around Australia. Aussie DS owners can just grab their Nintendo handhelds and leg it on over to the hotspots. There, you can test drive games such as Mario vs Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and Elite Beat Agents.

The hotspots also feature some unique Animal Crossing items that you can download to your copy of the game. A special Nintendogs function that allows Nintendogs owners to experience the joys of Bark Mode without having someone else physically there to play with is also available. For a list of the hotspots near your area, you can check out the Nintendo Wi Fi Connection hotspots list by clicking on the Read link below.

What do Pokemon and Animal Crossing have in common? At this point, aside from the fact both are on the DS platform and they involve minions of sickeningly cute critters, Animal Crossing's got its own movie in the works.

Yup, and while there's been a lot of mixed reactions regarding how this movies gonna turn out, we're going to give you guys another sneak peek. We've just picked up another trailer for the movie, and while it's all in Japanese, we thought you'd get a grasp of the the plot based on the scenes popping up.

Cheer up, guys - no need to be too violent about these things. Remember that the age demographic for flicks like these is for kids. With that said, imagine it as a nice, quiet anime like "My Neighbor Totoro", or "Spirited Away"...without the Ghibli logo. Enjoy the trailer.

If you own Animal Crossing: Wild World, then you know how cutesy and addictive it can be, even if you happen to be the manliest man in the universe. Those who've played it for a while now may have unlocked everything there is in the game and have milked all the fun out of it, but there may just be one little surprise for you if you go online two weeks from now.

According to the Nintendo Power magazine, Nintendo will be offering Wild World players a little gift in honor of the Wii's release and the upcoming Twilight Princess game. What is this nifty gift, you might ask? Well, we don't know what it is, but there's a good chance it's going to be Zelda-related, or at least something really funny for players to use.

To get a shot at the rare gift, you're supposed to start your game up and hop online through the Nintendo Wi-Fi system at any time between November 17 and 24. During this time, you should receive a letter from Nintendo at your Wild World mailbox that should have an attached in-game goodie. Simple, no?

Let us know what the treat is when it comes out, alright?

Enterbrain, the publishers of popular Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, has revealed the best selling games in Japan this year and guess what format they play on? That's right: DS. DS has sold the most consoles in the first half of the fiscal year, which runs from March 27 to September 24. Mario was one of the original adventure platformers and is a big seller just about everywhere, and during the first half of the fiscal year, New Super Mario Bros. for the DS managed to sell 3.09 million units!

The Japanese weren't satisfied with just one DS title, though. The popular Brain Age sequel, Motto Nou wo Kitaeru took second place, with 1.53 million copies sold in the given period. DS titles didn't take up the whole list though, with a PS2 game, Winning Eleven 10, selling 1.04 million units.

Then it goes straight back to DS titles, with the original Brain Age at number four selling 900,000 units, followed by Animal Crossing DS (870,000), Tetris DS (840,000), Final Fantasy III(730,000), the English language training program Eigo Zuke (670,000), the digital cookbook Shaberu DS Rori Navi (500,000), and Tamagotchi Puchi Puchi Omisecchi(500,000 units).

With three DS titles nominated for Game Of the Year in the Golden Joystick awards as well, it appears that 2006 is shaping up to be the year of the DS. But the release of PS3 and Wii in November should shake things up a little before Christmas. I wonder if New Super Mario Bros can hold onto the number one spot during this period? What do you think? Ssound off your comments!

The results are in...almost. The finalists for the Golden Joystick Game Of The Year, which has been around since 1982 and which has become one of the most prestigious gaming awards, have been announced. This year, the voting record has been broken, with over 400,000 gamers voting for the game of their choice since September. Now you get the chance to vote for the game of the year in the final stage of the Golden Joystick awards - which title will you crown best game of 2006? Here are the choices:

• Animal Crossing: Wild World
• Call of Duty 2
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Special Edition
• Half-Life 2
• Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend
• Mario Kart DS
• New Super Mario Bros.
• Pro Evolution Soccer 5
• Resident Evil 4

All voting can be done through the Golden Joystick's website and the awards ceremony will take place at the Park Lane Hilton, London in the Grand Ballroom on Friday, October 27. Get your votes in now!

So, do you think you're a hardcore Nintendo fan? Well then, it shouldn't be too difficult for you to find the hidden signatures of the sound designer Kazumi Totaka who is known for his work in games such as Animal Crossing, old Zelda titles, as well as several Mario and Yoshi games, among others. However, for the rest of us who have not yet reached the highest ranks in the Nintendo fan hierarchy, we got a little help with the video we found floating around the internet.

For those who are unfamiliar with what we're talking about, what we're referring to is the small melody that Totaka has been placing in his games for the past ten years. These melodies are similar to Easter eggs, and can only be "unlocked" or listened to in certain conditions. As shown in this video, these conditions include going to an NPC's house and staying there for a certain amount of time, or staying at the Game Over screen for more than two minutes, and so on.

This "feature" is actually nothing useful. It will not give you a BFG, and it will not give you infinite lives during your next Hyrule adventure, however, this does not make it any less fascinating, as we realize that a man has placed his mark on gaming history. It may not be as obvious or as grand as Nobuo Uematsu's scores, but its discreetness adds to the fascination as the hunt for this melody goes on.

Now that we are in the next generation of gaming, with the Wii coming along, perhaps we all should start paying a bit more attention to the credits. Who knows? Maybe that next Wii or DS game that you've pre-ordered contains a little piece of Totaka. Please do tell us when you find him.

In the meantime, to get you started on the search for Totakeke, here's a video which shows good places to begin.

In the latest Japanese sales charts that Media Create has compiled which are dated from August 28 to September 3, the Nintendo DS Lite has come out at the top, thanks to the release of its black version in Japan. It has sold a whopping eight times more than its close competitor, the Sony PSP. This is a huge thing since the number of units sold last week have almost doubled.

The number of PS2 units sold include both the "original" and the "slim" types, while the numbers in parenthesis are the total number of units that have been sold since the release of that particular title or console.

Hardware

• Nintendo DS Lite - 228,939 (4,196,826)
• PlayStation Portable - 27,499 (3,939,299)
• PlayStation 2 - 22,703 (19,684,767)
• Game Boy Advance SP - 2,751 (5,884,378)
• Game Boy Micro - 1,791 (535,040)
• Xbox 360 - 1,250 (140,493)
• GameCube - 855 (4,157,561)
• Nintendo DS - 320 (6,577,480)
• Game Boy Advance - 22 (8,822,676)
• Xbox - 0 (475,522)

DS Total - 10,774,306
GBA Total - 15,242,094

Moving on to the games themselves, the sales for Final Fantasy III have dropped, not because people didn't want it anymore (it DID completely sell out on its release day, afterall), but because at the moment, the limelight is shining on a non-Nintendo game, Phantasy Star. Ninty fans can still breathe easy, though, since the top ten is till dominated by Nintendo games.

Software

• PS2 - Phantasy Star Universe - Sega - 120,202 (NEW)
• NDS - New Super Mario Bros. - Nintendo - 72,763 (2,974,027)
• NDS - Brain Age 2 - Nintendo - 46,662 (3,119,857)
• NDS - Final Fantasy III - Square Enix - 45,949 (549,001)
• NDS - Freshly Picked Tingle's Rose Colored Rupee Land - Nintendo - 45,496 (NEW)
• NDS - Cooking Navi - Nintendo - 35,689 (419,733)
• NDS - Mario Hoops 3 on 3 - Square Enix - 34,001 (267,763)
• NDS - Animal Crossing: Wild World - Nintendo - 32,605 (3,181,735)
• GBA - Rythm Tengoku - Nintendo - 28,361 (123,432)
• NDS - Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2 - Namco Bandai - 27,540 (458,474)

We don't know whether it's the witty dialogues or the transition of the story between the real and unreal, but there's no doubt that Thug Headquarters's Saints Row is hitting the jackpot. We also know that all of these elements in this GTA-like thug game have melded to bring Saints Row to the top of the UK All Formats chart for the past five weeks. Despite this success, however, Saints Row earned a 6/10 rating with EDGE, much to the disappointment of a lot of fans.

The rest of the top ten slots were occupied by GTA: Liberty City Stories, New Super Mario Bros., Pro Evolution Soccer, Sims 2, Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training, Reservoir Dogs, and Animal Crossing.

There's also lots of people wondering if other games such as Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run, Enchanted Arms, Test Drive Unlimited, and especially Dead Rising will soon be taking over and throw Saints Row off of its pedestal.